


Going Back for Love

by jennandblitz



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Anal Sex, Depression, Deviates From Canon, Everyone Is Alive, Explicit Sexual Content, First War with Voldemort, First War with Voldemort Divergence, Fix-It, Flashbacks, Frottage, Halloween 1981 Doesn't Happen, Happy Ending, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Recreational Drug Use, Time Skips, vague suicidal ideations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-19
Updated: 2019-07-19
Packaged: 2020-05-14 19:54:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 27,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19280044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jennandblitz/pseuds/jennandblitz
Summary: Remus raises his wand because he can feel the answer bubbling up in his throat and he won’t, he can’t, let it out. He has tried for six years to move past this spectre from the halls of Hogwarts, tried to accept that that part of his life was over, and now Sirius is testing every sore spot, needling every vein, digging up every grave. Remus has spent half a decade building walls and he’ll be fucking damned if Sirius pulls them down. Yes, he is hurting, yes, he misses Sirius with every inch of his body, yes, he felt something for the first time in years waking up with Sirius’ breath on his neck, but he does not know this man. The Sirius he knew walked out of Hogwarts in May 1976, and this Beauxbatons-educated, fine upstanding rebel with a good haircut is a stranger.The events of 1976 change the course of the Marauders’ lives and now in 1982, after drifting away from his childhood friends, Remus Lupin struggles with the reappearance of the one person he thought he would never see again.





	Going Back for Love

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the RS Fix-It Fest 2019.  
> Thank you to my betas @wilteddaisy and @starstruck4moony. My writing is unfathomably better for your input.  
> Thank you to Muse and Moony for running the most fantastic happy ending fest there is.

May 1982

A knock on the door rouses Remus from a shallow sleep on the sofa.

It’s 1982 and there is a war going on and he hasn’t slept in a bed for _weeks_.

 _It won’t be about them_ , he reasons with himself. _It won’t be about the Potters. Dumbledore would send a Patronus, wouldn’t he?_

But it’s still with trepidation that Remus stretches out his folded limbs and rubs the back of his hand over one eye to try and dislodge the sleep from it. It’s probably not anyone important, after all, he decides as he stands on creaky joints. Remus’ little flat in Muggle London hasn’t seen visitors in months, maybe years—maybe at all since he moved in, besides the odd owl or Dumbledore’s Patronus when he summons Remus to go to the forests and run as a wolf for ‘the good of the Order’. He doubts anyone even knows where he lives, actually. He hasn’t spoken to James or Lily since they went into hiding nearly a year ago under the Fidelius Charm. He hasn’t spoken to Peter in more than casual pleasantries since the summer of 1978 when the three of them agreed it wasn’t safe to run around as Animagi anymore, not with the Dark Mark looming in the sky every other day.

He only speaks to Dumbledore, if anyone at all, but it’s in passing, at secret meetings at the Hog’s Head, not quite far enough from the golden memories of Hogwarts for it not to hurt. Maybe a quick conversation with Mad-Eye Moody, a reminder for _constant vigilance_ , or a hurried trip to Dorcas Meadowes—who is brilliant at healing spells but is a poster child for the grief of war-time loss nowadays. As it stands, Remus feels separate. He feels separate from everything: from who he used to be, from who he wanted to be, from his family, his friends, and _life_ in general.

He wonders, absently, on the way to the front door, if he even knows the meaning of the word _want_ anymore. Wanting means desire, it means having a driving force for _something_. Remus has no drive. He has no urge to do anything but _exist_ , and every day it becomes more and more of a challenge.

Even now, four years this summer since he left, Remus longs for Hogwarts: the stability and the order of the school, despite all the residual pain its halls held, the spectres wandering there, the ghosts of memories that assailed him no matter how hard he tried to concentrate on anything else. He thought resolutely of Hogwarts as a bastion of hope, a place he never thought he would be able to go to, but he _did_ , and for a time it was just so wonderful. Until it wasn’t.

The knock at the door comes again, a little sharper. Remus sighs.

“Alright, hold on!”

The irony of it is, although Remus is fighting in a war, he’s never felt less like a fighter. He doesn’t have anything to fight _for_. True, Benjy Fenwick died last year, and the Prewett twins the year before that, and Marlene McKinnon only four months ago, but Remus finds their loss is akin to a dull ache in his breastbone, some kind of twisted stamp of proof that this will all end badly eventually. Fighting is only prolonging the inevitable.

Perhaps, Remus muses as he unlocks the door and waves his hand to dispel the meagre protection charms he keeps there just to keep Moody off his back, if there were a Death Eater on the other side of this door, then Remus would just tip his chin up and say _oh, alright then_. He tells himself if it were a Death Eater they would’ve blasted through the door by now. So maybe it’s a delivery boy with the wrong door, or someone coming to talk about _faith_.

But, _Merlin burning_ , it’s so much worse.

Because there, in the stairwell of his dingy Muggle London flat, damp from the rain, in a leather jacket and skinny jeans, his swirling black hair in a messy plait over one shoulder, is a man Remus hasn’t seen in _six years_.

Remus blinks, as if the apparition might fade. He saw him often enough at first, in the halls of Hogwarts after it all happened, in the corner of the Three Broomsticks at their old table, in their compartment of the Hogwarts Express. In the bed he occupied, all sprawling pale limbs and wry smiles, beckoning Remus to join him.

But Sirius doesn’t flicker away like an apparition this time.

He’s here.

The _bastard_ smiles.

“Hello, Moony.”

* * *

November 1976

“What do you want for Christmas, Moony?” Sirius asked, lying on his bed and tilting his head a little to stare at Remus.

“Nothing, Padfoot,” Remus replied, nipping absently at a stray feather on the end of his quill. Their dormitory was warm despite the lateness of the year, the fire blazing in the hearth and James’ well-cast warming charm on Remus’ blankets still clinging despite it being a few hours since he had cast it. James was down at Quidditch practise, and Peter was with his History of Magic study group. Remus thought the study group might be an excuse to give himself and Sirius a little bit of _alone time_ , but he didn’t think about that too hard, or else he’d get embarrassed.

“Why?” Sirius asked, mirth dancing in his voice as he rolled onto his front and kicked his feet up behind him, resting his chin on his palm. “Because you’ve already got me?”

Remus stifled a chuckle into his Transfiguration homework, looking as if he might be concentrating. He hadn’t written anything for maybe an hour, though. Remus didn’t want to admit he’d just been watching Sirius flip through his own books until the black-haired boy had gotten bored.

“Because you do, you know. Have me.” Sirius swung his legs from his own bed and crossed over to Remus’, sitting on the edge in the patch of space free from books.

Remus knew he turned a little pink at the admission, but tried to carry on like normal. Sirius was always so full-on, always so brash and never one to mince his words. If Sirius disliked you, you knew, if he liked you, you knew.

 _I fancy you, you know_ , he had said to Remus only two months earlier. Never one to be tactful, he had just blurted it out one night behind Greenhouse Two where they were smoking a Muggle joint to help Remus’ moon aches. Remus had choked on his inhale and Sirius had laughed and laughed until he wasn’t laughing and they were kissing, pressing together, smiling into each other’s mouths.

Remus had _loved_ Sirius for nearly a year, from a distance, in a way he wasn’t sure was platonic or not until it _wasn’t_ and he _wanted_ Sirius like nothing else. Maybe something had provoked Sirius’ confession that night, something over the summer, something muttered in passing in the corridor, or maybe it was just the high.

But now Christmas was looming and he and Sirius were… something. Boyfriends? Going out? Snogging a lot? _Merlin_ , speaking of—

Remus rolled his Transfiguration essay up—he could deal with it tomorrow—and turned to Sirius, who was smiling his wry, self-assured smile, with tendrils of inky black escaping the knot he had secured the majority of his hair in using his wand. “I know,” Remus said finally, on a smile that reached his eyes because he _did_ have Sirius, and Sirius had him.

For a long time, Remus didn’t think he would get anything like this; the same teenage infatuation that seemed to take over the world when the characters in his books felt it, or the adoration some of the girls like MacDonald or McKinnon talked about, or the way James waxed lyrical about Lily Evans—although that was an anomaly. But here he was, with Sirius Black, the most gorgeous person in school, and Sirius was smiling at him like that and Remus thought that must be what this all felt like, because it felt like his whole world was just _there_ , for the taking.

Remus leant forward and kissed Sirius, because they were teenage boys and that’s what teenagers did and for once Remus felt like a teenager and not an old man or a wolf or something entirely detached from his body.

Sirius moaned softly into the kiss and pitched forward to meet him, his tongue leaving a hot swipe over Remus’ lips. Remus felt him reach up to his hair, then he must’ve waved his wand because Sirius’ magic shivered over him—hot and brash and as wild as its owner—and the books sprawled on the bed collected themselves in a neat pile resolutely out of the way.

Remus chuckled as Sirius’ hot mouth blazed a path down his neck, and his skilled tongue swirled over those tender, almost-ticklish spots, and his insistent hands were pushing him back onto the bed to lay Remus out for him and Remus let him and let him and let him.

* * *

May 1982

Remus makes tea on auto-pilot, tapping tidily on the kettle to bring it to boil before he retrieves two mugs and throws a bag in each. He’s half-surprised he has more than one mug, or any tea in the flat at all. Just Sirius’ luck then, isn’t it?

“How do you take your tea?” Because Remus _does not_ remember that Sirius takes his tea with milk and one sugar, steeped for far too long. He wants Sirius to have to tell him, he wants Sirius to think he has forgotten all of these little moments about them both. Remus glances up to see Sirius still stood by the door, having taken his jacket off and hung it from the depressingly empty coat rack in the poor excuse for a hallway that really is just a small space between bookshelf and sofa. He looks around in one sweeping, appraising glance, looking every bit the Pureblood.

Sirius doesn’t reply, just steps around the sofa into the room proper to peer at the bookshelves on the other side of the tiny room that look only moments away from falling down, as usual. Remus watches, wary, like he’s with a wolf pack and he doesn’t know their allegiance yet and he might be a hair’s breadth from death. “It’s just you here, Moony?”

“Mhm,” Remus says, mouth tight around the words. What is Sirius _doing here_ , why has he just turned back up after six years, why has he come to _Remus_?

“Where’s Prongs? Lily, or Harry? Or Wormy?” Sirius strides around to the sofa and sits, one ankle crossed over the other knee, reclined, like he owns the bloody place.

Remus shrugs. So Sirius knew about James and Lily getting married, knew about Harry being born? He had been receiving James’ letters then, the hundreds of them he must’ve sent in the past half-decade. So why hadn’t he been replying? Why had Sirius just been ignoring everything since he stepped out of Hogwarts that day? And why the hell is he back now, pretending it’s been mere moments since he left?

Remus doesn’t realise he’s finished tea until he looks down and sees two mugs in his hands as he’s crossing the room. He sets Sirius’ tea down on the coffee table with a _thunk_ , and Sirius reaches forward to pick it up. Sirius’ nails are still black polish, but they’re manicured instead of chipped and chewed like they were at Hogwarts. Remus’ hands feel arthritic, creaky and scarred and broken even though he’s only twenty-two. Their fingers brush. Remus withdraws like he’s been shocked and steps back, retrieving the rickety old chair from the other side of the room to set next to the coffee table. He doesn’t trust himself to sit on the sofa for the blooming ache in his chest because Sirius is sat on his bloody sofa like the past six years haven’t happened.

“You remember.” Sirius’ voice is deep and rich, filled with mirth as he murmurs over the top of his mug after a sip of tea. He’s smiling as if there’s a joke somewhere that Remus is missing. “Strong, milk, one sugar.”

“Huh, do I?” Remus tries to look disinterested as he drinks his own tea. It’s too hot and scalding the roof of his mouth but he keeps on drinking it because he’s not sure what to do with his hands otherwise. He hopes desperately that Sirius will choose to fill the silence with some bloody explanations. But it stays quiet in the flat, the hum of traffic outside and the occasional shout from passersby the only noise.

Remus doesn’t look at Sirius, doesn’t want to see his smarmy smile, or if his features are still as fine or if he still has a little knick in his left eyebrow or if his eyes are still the same grey that used to make Remus shiver all over. Remus studies his teacup in silence until he can’t anymore and sets it down on the coffee table with a bang.

“Why in Merlin’s name are you here?” _Padfoot_. The nickname is on the tip of his tongue but Remus swallows it back like he swallows everything that will hurt or make him remember or make him care.

Sirius sips his tea for a moment longer, surveying the room. “Not much left in France for me now. Thought London might be better.” Sirius sets his mug down on the table. He’s left the dregs of tea in the bottom of it, like he always used to do, one of Sirius’ habits that Remus never questioned when they were lovely and endearing. Sirius cracks his knuckles—they’re tattooed now, runes across his fingers—and sits back. “Doing some work for old Dumbles too.”

“We all are,” Remus retorts. “There’s a bloody war on and you come strolling back? You don’t- you don’t even know what’s been going on.”

Sirius raises an eyebrow. “Prongs has been writing.”

Remus shrugs one shoulder, determined not to get caught up in this. He needs to stay objective and separate from it all. He knows Sirius hadn’t been writing back, but it’s not his place to discuss. He feels as if he barely knows James now, it’s been a year since they spoke. Perhaps if they were closer when the Potters went into hiding, he might’ve visited, but they weren’t, so he didn’t. The distance between them had been growing and growing the longer they were away from Hogwarts. It hadn’t always been there, though.

* * *

April 1976

The fifth-year Gryffindor dormitory was as quiet as it had ever been during term-time. Usually, that meant the dorms were vacant, their occupants out planning some revenge against that group of Slytherins who bullied the first-year girl with thick-rimmed glasses like James’, or the Ravenclaws that called the fourth-year boy with anxiety _stupid_ until Sirius stepped in and hexed them, or saving the second-year who still got lost from detention with Filch for being out after curfew because they took the wrong staircase again and Peter guided them back.

But on that night?

Remus sat on the windowsill, the waning moon burning a brand into his skin, less searing than two nights previously in the Shack, but infinitely more painful, as Sirius collected his belongings and deposited them in his trunk. Peter watched from his own bed, his eyes rimmed in red.

James stood next to Sirius, as if he might try and block the other boy’s path but thought better of it every time. “Just don’t go, Padfoot.”

Sirius smiled sadly and dumped an armful of balled-up socks into his trunk. Remus thought some of those socks were likely to be his, but couldn’t bring himself to voice that concern. “I can’t. Decision’s already been made, Prongs.”

James sighed and lodged both hands into his mass of hair, scrubbing through it as if to try and relieve some of the tension against his scalp. He probably has a headache, Remus thought. Remus wondered if he would ever _not_ have a headache again.

“Then—then—I don’t know. Come and live with me, Mum and Dad love you. Just run away and come and live with me.” James sounded like he was pleading.

Remus turned away to stare out the window, unable to hear one of his best friends begging the other not to leave it all behind. He didn’t know what to think. Intellectually, Remus knew he shouldn’t have forgiven Sirius so quickly. Sirius had told Snape how to get to the Willow, how to reach the Shrieking Shack, and Remus had nearly become a killer because of it. Remus thought it should feel like betrayal, a heavy weight in his chest because _Merlin_ , was he nothing to Sirius? Could he be used as a bargaining chip so easily?

But then, it didn’t. Remus found he didn’t _care_.

Sirius didn’t care that Remus was a werewolf. _So what?_ Sirius had said that night in second-year when the boys had confronted Remus. Sirius had forgiven Remus years ago for his monstrousness, so why couldn’t Remus do that too? It was easy to forgive someone when you catalogued all their past forgivenesses on you.

“Moons…”

Remus turned to see the dormitory now empty and Sirius stood before him, wand in his hair, teeth chewing worriedly at his bottom lip.

“McGonagall is coming to get me in five minutes.”

Remus shook his head. “Don’t go.”

“I’ve been expelled, Rem. I don’t have a choice.” Sirius looked resigned, as if he were somehow above this even now. He had always carried himself like he was the best in the room, like he was deigning you with his presence, and even now he just didn’t seem to care.

Remus peered into Sirius’ cloudy grey eyes, desperate to see even a moment of fear or sadness or _Merlin_ , even anger, frustration, because _how dare they expel me?_ But no, nothing. Remus thought he had learned long ago to look past the mask that Sirius Black presented to the world. But now it seemed there was a new mask. Either that, or Sirius really didn’t care he was being expelled and made to finish his education at Beauxbatons…

“No. You must. We’ll speak to Dumbledore, he’ll understand. McGonagall loves you, she wants you to stay. You’re sorry, aren’t you? Just apologise, Padfoot… Don’t go.”

Sirius sighed, leant his hip against the pillar of the nearest bed—Remus’—and crossed his arms. “Doesn’t work like that…”

Remus slid from the windowsill and closed the gap between them, hands going to Sirius’ shoulders as he peered up at Sirius. “Since when have you ever done anything the way it’s meant to be done? Why aren’t you fighting? Why aren’t you kicking and screaming?” Remus swallowed shallowly against the tears trying to collect in the threads of his voice. “You aren’t fighting for _us,_ for _me?_ ”

“Moony…” Sirius leant forward to bring their lips together in a kiss. It took Remus a moment to kiss back, the idea that this might be the last time he gets to kiss Sirius ringing through his mind like the resonance of a string pulled taut. This might be the last time he ever tasted the unique cocktail of Sirius’ mouth, cigarette smoke and Fizzing Whizzbees and something like the forest. Remus reached for Sirius’ hand, to link their fingers together to try and stop him leaving.

A knock sounded at the door just as Sirius swiped his tongue over the seam of Remus’ lips.

“Mr. Black?”

Remus watched, feet feeling as if they were stuck fast to the floor, as Sirius drew back, ran a hand through his hair, and then stepped towards his trunk. Professor McGonagall pushed the door open; a soft expression on her face. Remus watched as she waved her wand towards Sirius’ trunk and the two of them started down the stairs. Remus stood, unable to move, and watched Sirius Black walk out of his life.

* * *

May 1982

“Where are you staying?” Remus asks to his second cup of tea. He’ll need to go out and get more teabags tomorrow seeing as Sirius is here and burning through his stores at twice the rate.

It’s evening now, London slowly starting to trickle to life outside of the single glass pane separating Remus from it all. Remus tries to tune out the noise, making a mental note to reinforce his privacy charms when he can next bring himself to do any housework.

Sirius studies his fingernails in typical fashion; can Remus use that word anymore? _Typical?_ He knows _nothing_ of this man except distant memories of the body he inhabits, his soul is a stranger. “Don’t know that I’ve got anywhere yet, only arrived back this morning. Dumbledore put me in touch with you when I couldn’t remember Prongs’ address.”

Remus hums something into his mug. He wonders if Sirius wants Remus to offer his flat, his sofa, his body, his life, his fucking soul, up to him. Remus can’t think straight. His flat smells like Sirius. He smells the same, somehow—cigarette smoke ingrained into his clothes, in his hair, lingering above his unique brand of fiery, brash, wild magic, something of the forest. A long time ago it used to invite a sort of wistful melancholy into Remus’ heart, a soft sigh of _oh, I love him so_ , but now it just sparks a feeling of utter betrayal that lodges behind Remus’ teeth like a piece of gristle.

Sirius telling Snape of the Willow, of orchestrating some grand ‘prank’ with Remus the werewolf in a starring role, doesn’t hurt anymore. Merlin, Remus forgave Sirius for that long ago, as soon as he’d woken and realised what had happened, because Sirius had forgiven Remus for the wolf. It was the same, wasn’t it? A darkness within them both. No, what hurt most was the betrayal of Sirius leaving. The Sirius Black Remus knew was a fighter, would cling to him tooth and nail because Remus was _his Moony_ , and he would be damned if anything came between them. But Sirius had followed McGonagall out of the dormitory without a backwards glance.

 _That_ hurt.

“Fidelius Charm?” Sirius asks, easing himself off the sofa and stepping around the coffee table to peer at the bookshelves behind it again, even though Remus is sure the other man has catalogued them all already for how well they’ve avoided each other’s gaze in the past ten minutes.

“Mhm.” Remus, unwilling to talk about the Potters now he has such little involvement in their lives, takes a sip of his tea and tilts his head to watch Sirius, still not sure if he isn’t really a spectre. He looks different, but Remus can’t quite put his finger on how. His hair is longer, swirling ink down his shoulders. He carries himself with the grace of a Black, none of the slanted shoulders he sported as a youth in some kind of vague _fuck you_ to his parents. The teenage insouciance once displayed in his expressions has matured into a distinct look of _I am better than you_ that Remus isn’t sure that he could argue with.

Sirius opens his mouth to say something else, perhaps a quip about his book collection, or another remark about his abode not being up to standard or some barb that Remus isn’t sure whether he meant it to sound so _cruel_ or not.

“What are you _doing_ here, Sirius?” The name sounds awful on his tongue. He hasn’t said it out loud in five years. “Why are you back? Why did Dumbledore send you _here_ of all bloody places?”

Sirius smirks as if he’s been waiting for Remus to say something like that since he stepped through the door. Merlin, Remus could’ve hoped life might beat some of his self-assuredness away after 1976, but no, Sirius is a berk, as ever.

“Well, Moony—”

“Don’t call me that.”

Sirius raises an eyebrow. “Remus.” The word is sinuous and slides over Remus’ skin like silk. He shivers. _No one_ says his name like Sirius does. He can’t decide if _Moony_ is the less disastrous name when faced with intonation like that.

“Why not Lupin?” Remus retorts, folding his hands in his lap. “We’re as good as strangers, aren’t we?”

“Are we?” A look passes over Sirius’ face that Remus can’t place. Perhaps it looks a little like regret, pain, sorrow, but Remus doesn’t linger. He doesn’t _want_ to place it. When his question hangs unanswered in the air, Sirius clears his throat and continues. “I went to Beauxbatons, as you know, and stayed with my Uncle Alphard during the holidays.” His voice is crystal clear and effortlessly charming and Remus stares at a crack in the paint on the wall opposite to stop himself just drifting to the sound of it.

“I kept in touch with Regulus though, of course—” _Of course,_ Remus’ brain supplies, _why wouldn’t you keep in touch with Regulus when your three best friends (and the boy who loved you) are desperate for any scrap of information from you?_ — “and after school, he learned a few things which could’ve been of some importance to the Order.”

Remus quirks an eyebrow. He had assumed Regulus had become a Death Eater, being in Slytherin and keeping company with that sort, but maybe not. Unless, of course, Remus has invited a Death Eater into his house after all and he’s about to be Killing Cursed into next week and his living memory will be _poor Remus Lupin, couldn’t see past a pretty face, of course_. He stills the rising panic with a tidy swallow of his tea and sets the mug down heavily.

Sirius looks at him, clearly waiting for some kind of reaction. He’s used to people hanging onto his every word. Well, Remus won’t give him one. He grips his wand in his sleeve. If it were anyone else he wouldn’t put up such a fight, but it’s Sirius Black and he’ll be damned if this man has a grip on _every_ part of his life.

“Being embroiled with the wrong sort meant Dumbledore didn’t believe him at first,” Sirius says as he paces back towards the sofa. Remus tenses and doesn’t care if Sirius notices. “So he asked me to help him. After a bit of back and forth, old Dumbles realised the truth of our situation and asked me to come back to Britain to help out.” He sits on the sofa with a sigh, folding one leg elegantly over the other. His boots are impeccably polished and Remus scuffs the worn sole of his sock against the floorboard.

“Naturally, I didn’t have a reason to stay once Alphard died.” Sirius pauses again, throwing Remus another look, another well-baited hook of _here’s where you give your sympathies_. Remus doesn’t bite. He’s seen enough death these past four years not to care for someone’s uncle he’s never met. Merlin, he barely cares for the person he sat next to in Arithmancy now, does he? They died last month if he remembers correctly.

Remus is more concerned with the information he or Regulus might be holding. He knows information is the key to winning this war. Brute force is out of the window thanks to dwindling numbers. “So what _is_ the truth of the situation? What did you and Regulus find out?”

Sirius smiles secretively and tucks a strand of hair behind his ear. “Afraid I can’t tell you that, Moons—” _Don’t call me that,_ Remus bites back— “it’s top secret information between the old man and myself.”

“Top secret my arse,” Remus fires back, unused to not getting the information he wanted. Dumbledore usually shares plays with him, or at least parts of them, enough for the _half-breed_ to feel useful—though Remus thinks that’s his own mind providing that phrasing. Dumbledore lets him into battlefield secrets because his mind is sharper than his claws and there’s a ruthless streak there that comes with having such a cool detachment from your surroundings.

“You used to tell me _everything_ ,” Remus hisses and the words sting his lips on the way out. It’s the first time he’s alluded to their past and it tastes awful.

For just a moment, Remus sees the spectre of the boy that used to haunt him, the earnest face, the bright grey eyes, the murmurs of _Oh Moony_ that used to accompany that particular softness of his kisses.

The Sirius on his sofa laughs and the veneer is broken with such a cool, sharp laugh that rings through the stale air of the flat. “I did, didn’t I?” He fixes Remus with a look. “You told me all your secrets too.”

“Is that a threat?” Remus leans forward, all too aware of the sway the Black family still held in society, all the secrets Sirius did in fact know, his wand sliding into his hand to provide some kind of reassurance. Remus’ magic was always tighter, controlled, sharper than Sirius’ wild tendrils of it, and he can feel the air grow thicker around them with the mingling of it both, the same way it used to swirl around them when they fucked.

“I don’t know, _Lupin_. Should it be?” Sirius’ wand is in his fingers too, twirling through the elegant lines of them, catching the wan streetlight from outside. It’s a thinly veneered reminder that Sirius was the best in Duelling Club for those few months they all attended.

Remus sets his jaw. “You should leave.”

Sirius is still reclining on the sofa, idle in the face of the threat Remus poses. Perhaps Remus was a pushover at school, so pleased to have friends, basking in the golden light of Hogwarts and Gryffindor and all things glorious. But he doesn’t have that now. Remus intends to take as many Death Eaters with him as possible when the war finally does catch him, nothing more, nothing less.

The corner of Sirius’ mouth lifts in a way that tells Remus he doesn’t take him seriously. “Dumbledore said you could probably put me up for the night.” It sounds like he’s saying _You’ll let me stay, won’t you, Moony?_

Remus laughs. “Dumbledore’s wrong. I won’t have a stranger sleeping in my flat, not with a war on.” Because they are, Remus tells himself. They are strangers, who once ago traded secrets for kisses and a tenuous feeling of acceptance, but it’s gone now.

Sirius just stands on a sigh and straightens his shirt. Remus rises too, wary, and crosses to the door to pull it open.

After a moment, Sirius follows him. He pauses on the doorstep, snags his jacket from the coat rack and touches Remus on the arm. Remus flinches and he _knows_ Sirius sees it but he doesn’t care. They are strangers.

“Night, Moony,” Sirius says and for a second Remus is back in the Gryffindor dormitory with Sirius pressed against his back and cigarette-smoke kisses across the nape of his neck and fingers against the soft, vulnerable skin of his belly. _Night, Moony-mine._

He nods stiffly. “Goodbye Sirius.”

Sirius steps into the stairwell. After a long look around, he smiles with one side of his mouth and turns into the tight twist of Apparition that leaves an after-burn of his magic against Remus’ senses. Remus stares at the spot for far too long, remembering everything he has tried to forget.

* * *

December 1975

“Tell me something I don’t know about you, Moony,” said Sirius around a long inhale of the joint between his elegant fingers.

They sat on the windowsill of James’ room at the Potter’s house, Remus with his back pressed against Sirius’ chest, one leg hanging down outside the window. It was a new moon and the only light between them was the gentle orange flare of the joint, the stars above them giving little illumination.

James and Peter were asleep in two of the four beds Mrs Potter had transfigured in James’ room for the Marauders. Both Mrs Lupin and Mrs Black thought the boys were staying at Hogwarts for Christmas, but Mrs Potter didn’t mind a few white lies if it meant she got to feed them up on turkey and roast potatoes and scones with homemade jam.

Remus let his head drop back onto Sirius’ shoulder, taking comfort in the broad planes of Sirius’ torso, the way Sirius’ long-limbed elegance seemed to wrap him up. “I wanted to be a teacher when I was younger.”

“You don’t want to anymore?” Sirius pressed a kiss onto a constellation of freckles at Remus’ shoulder. The pyjama top he wore had slipped from one shoulder after Sirius deftly undid the top few buttons to better access Remus’ skin a short while ago. Sirius was bare-chested despite the cold, pyjama bottoms low on his hips, barefooted too, a warming charm in lieu of real clothes because _I’m comfier like this Moony_. Remus wasn’t complaining.

He shrugged one shoulder and leant up to allow Sirius to slide the filter of the joint between his lips so he could take a drag. The gesture lingered in his throat as something abjectly vulnerable, like a dog accepting food solely from the palm of his master. “I don’t know,” Remus admitted, smoke swirling out of his mouth that Sirius captured between his own lips. “Haven’t thought about it in a while.”

“You should. You’d be brilliant at it, Professor Moony.”

Remus watched through eyes heavy-lidded with desire as Sirius took a drag on the joint and let the smoke trickle out the corner of his mouth with practised indifference. Remus leant up to taste it on his tongue and press his mouth to the line of Sirius’ jaw. “Mmm, I like the sound of that.”

“You filthy bastard,” Sirius said without bite, offering Remus the filter end of the joint again, pinched between his fingers now that it was growing short.

Remus laughed as Sirius’ mouth trailed hot over his neck, his head tipped back onto Sirius’ shoulder, his body pliant like warm honey against Sirius’ chest. He thought he’d never be as happy as he was in this exact moment.

“Really, though,” Sirius said, like a dog with a bone, unwilling to let go. “You should. After school, once all this… _war_ business has been sorted out. You could go to the Magical College at Oxford - whatever it’s called - and become a teacher.” Sirius nipped the angle of Remus’ shoulder where sinew gave way to the ball of his shoulder joint and swirled his tongue to soothe the sting but it only stoked the fire in Remus’ gut. “I’ll stay at home and warm the bed for you. I’ll bring you tea when you’re studying and looking all _professorial_ and utterly sexy and probably end up fucking you over the desk.”

Remus’ face flamed red as he reached up to card fingers through Sirius’ loose black hair as if it went some way to conveying just how beautiful Sirius looked in the dim light of the stars. He had to admit he rather liked the idea of that, his mind readily supplementing the fantasy with the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom, Remus in nice robes, Sirius in sinful black jeans, bending him over the desk and pounding into him with abandon, papers and books strewn around them. Or maybe, _Merlin_ , sitting in that comfy looking chair at the desk with Sirius kneeling between his legs, smirking up at him, his eyes saying _Oh, I’m going to take you apart, Moony_.

“You’re imagining it, aren’t you?” Sirius teased, his deft pale fingers sliding into Remus’ pyjama top to stroke over his chest and toy with one pink nipple. His other hand, the one with the joint hanging between the fingers, skimmed down to circle over the waistband of Remus’ pyjama bottoms. Remus’ gaze followed the flickering orange end of the joint like a beacon, their only real light source, as he lifted his hips towards Sirius’ touch.

“Perhaps,” he breathed, writhing a little because Sirius knew just how to touch him.

Sirius lifted his hand to deliver the joint to his lips and took a drag. Remus watched his mouth in the little light that flare of air through the filter paper afforded them, trying not to keen at the loss of Sirius’ skilled fingers against him. Merlin, Sirius looked like a dream like that, though, a hearty substitute for his touch when the vision of him was so stunning, looking down at Remus with those stormy grey eyes.

“Tell me something I don’t know about you, Padfoot,” Remus said as Sirius offered him the last pull of the joint. Sirius’ fingers grazed over Remus’ mouth as he pulled away and transfigured the butt into a paper moth. His magic thrummed through the night air, hot and wild, and it made Remus sink into him even further.

Sirius smiled and bent his head to mouth along Remus’ collarbone, exhaling sweet smoke over the skin. “I think you already know everything, don’t you?” His voice was a low murmur that shivered over Remus and seemed to have a greater effect than his touch.

“Do I?” Remus smiled, tilting his head for Sirius to kiss a path to the pulse hammering away at his neck, head swimming pleasantly. He watched the curls of smoke float up into the sky. It should be cold, he thought, for December, but he was warm with Sirius against him, magic around them both, floating away on sensation.

“Yeah.” Sirius fitted his teeth to the angle of Remus’ jaw and scraped gently before nosing back into the light brown curls at his temple. “How about something I only knew myself just now?”

Remus hummed something affirmative, realising in his haze that one of his hands was still tangled in Sirius’ hair. He twisted his fingers slightly, feeling the silk of those strands sliding across his palm and focusing wholly on the feeling of Sirius.

“I know that when we’re done with Hogwarts, you and I will live together. We’ll get a flat in London with Prongs and Wormy. We’ll have a bedroom where we can lock the door and throw up every Silencing Charm and it’ll be _ours_. You can go to Oxford and become a Professor and all your students will fancy you. I’ll get a motorbike and fix it up and on the weekends we’ll go for drives. We’ll find a secluded glade for a picnic and we’ll fuck on the grass, in the sun. And everything will be fine, because there’ll be no war, and nothing but us and it’ll be wonderful.”

Remus smiled. He knew there was a war brewing, he had read the papers and seen the worried faces and felt the fear in the adult conversation he overheard when they were in the Three Broomsticks. But here, with Sirius wrapped around him, mouth on his neck, fingers seeking pleasure, head swimming with loveliness, Remus believed him.

It was going to be wonderful.

* * *

June 1982

It has been two weeks since Remus saw Sirius Black Apparate from his stairwell. Remus has been plagued by memories he had long since stored in the dusty archives of his mind, but the reappearance of a spectre on his doorstep has unearthed them all.

Remus thinks of blissful summers by the lake at Hogwarts, the Marauders—Merlin burning, he hasn’t thought of that term in years—sprawled together and bound in the nearsighted way teenagers were. They thought they’d be together forever.

Remus thinks of the scant nine months he and Sirius had as whatever they were, boyfriends, lovers, a bit of fun, _desperately in love_. He thinks of Sirius curling protectively around him the mornings after the moons and kissing over his scars. He thinks of Sirius smiling at him from across the Charms classroom, his grin bright and warm as he cast charms with an easy flick of his wrist and his magic assailed Remus’ senses. He thinks of Sirius accosting him in the few days before the moon when Remus complained his senses were _too_ sharp and he couldn’t concentrate and so Sirius would urge Remus back onto the bed and let his whole world become nothing but Sirius Black, as if it hadn’t been for years already.

He thinks of Sirius. It _hurts_.

The moon is a brand in the sky as Remus steps out of his flat and shuts the door behind him, half-surprised it doesn’t break from its hinges. He traipses down the stairs and into the small alleyway his door opens onto, taking a long look around to make sure he is indeed alone, before he Apparates to the alley behind the Hog’s Head.

The papers Remus has been researching are tucked into his pocket under a protective spell and he pats them reassuringly as he steps through the back door of the pub and through a Disillusioned wall into the private room Dumbledore meets him in. It’s dual purpose, this trip with the moon a silvery orb in the sky. It’s Remus’ monthly check-in the afternoon of the full moon—the thing he tries not to think about lest it feel too much like Dumbledore is keeping tabs on him—but he also has to hand over this paperwork. Remus has spent two weeks convincing himself he doesn’t recognise the handwriting on those papers, but the neat, elegant script is burned into his mind.

 _Moony, fancy a snog behind Greenhouse Two at lunch? I’ve a joint in my pocket_ landing on his desk in the middle of Transfiguration.

 _Happy Birthday Remus! Love, Padfoot, Prongs and Wormtail_ neatly in a greeting card and proudly displayed on his bedside table for months.

 _Freshly cut grass. Earl Grey tea. Engine oil. Your magic (that smells like firewood and lightning and the soil after it rains)_ written down for posterity after the infamous Amortentia lesson.

So he knows the notes in his pocket are written with Sirius’ hand, or else someone with impeccable forgery skills, and they seem to weigh a tonne against his side. They might be filled with information about the Hogwarts founders and everything else thoroughly uninteresting yet necessary he has been researching for two weeks, but whenever Remus sees that neat, elegant script, all he can remember are the love notes etched into the part of his mind he tries in vain to lock away.

Dumbledore’s assignments are as infuriating as ever, though. Remus is given just enough information to reach the appropriate conclusions—something about cursed objects, research into the Hogwarts founders—but never quite _enough_ to understand the whole picture. Dumbledore has a habit of giving any number of people a piece each of a jigsaw and orchestrating their lives to ensure they never put their pieces together until precisely the moment he wants. Remus knows this. He has tried not to think too hard on the contents of the papers the same way he tries not to think about the hand that wrote them. He doesn’t _want_ to know why Sirius is researching the Hogwarts founders or cursed objects, or why he’s back from France—back from the fucking dead it feels like—or why Dumbledore sent him to Remus’ flat of all places. But curiosity burns the back of his throat like cheap Firewhisky. He can address it properly when he isn’t about to transform into a sodding wolf, he tells himself sharply, forever trying to regiment his own thinking.

He wants this meeting over as quickly as possible. Being this close to Hogwarts riles him up—he can see the Shack from here and remember the best times of his life running with a dog, a stag and a rat and forgetting that everything hurt. Dumbledore is at the desk, eyes glinting over his half-moon spectacles.

Remus retrieves the papers from his pocket and sets them on the desk. “I don’t have time tonight. But I’m coming back to discuss the contents of this report later.”

Remus gave up the small-talk of conversation long ago. He thinks Dumbledore engages him in it just to irk him. “Hello Remus, how are you? I hope the moon tonight isn’t too unpleasant.”

“I don’t know what you’re doing, but I strongly suggest not trusting the Blacks, Albus.”

Dumbledore’s eyes sparkle but he doesn’t give anything away. Remus finds he respects and detests the man between every breath for how close he plays his cards to his chest. “I think we’ll discuss this another time, Remus?” He says in a way that means they will _never_ speak of it again; Dumbledore will know but will deflect the conversation at every opportunity.

Far from satisfied, Remus nods sharply and buries his hands in his pockets.

“I’ll see you tomorrow morning. Remember, send a Patronus if you require anything.”

It’s meant to feel like a security net, a reassurance that someone in the Order would come to him if anything goes awry during the moon. Remus is sure that Dumbledore is rubbing salt in an old wound with those thinly veiled niceties. He’ll be able to sprout wings better than he will send a Patronus if it’s a bad moon.

Remus smiles sardonically and acquiesces to the old man. “Goodbye, Albus.”

He steps out of the Disillusioned doorway and runs smack into another body. The familiar scent hits him through the barrier of magic and Remus recoils. Sirius grabs his arm to steady him and his face blooms into a wide grin.

“Hello Moony.”

Remus clears his throat and tries to step neatly around the other man but Sirius keeps a hand on his arm. He’s only aware of the growl brewing in his throat when it erupts out of his mouth and an expression he can’t place flits across Sirius’ face. The other man’s fingers tighten on his arm.

“Let me go, Sirius.” He wants to call him _Black_ , but Sirius always hated that at school and for some reason Remus’ pain has its limits.

“It’s tonight,” Sirius says. His grey eyes are wide and he looks fifteen to Remus, as if he’s just looked out of the window and seen the moon, as if it doesn’t regulate every second of his bloody life. Remus can’t relate. Remus’ breath slips out between his teeth at the closeness between them, the odd openness in Sirius’ eyes.

Then someone clears their throat behind Sirius’ shoulder and Sirius steps back. Regulus looks different to how Remus remembers from school too. He looks less like a haughty arsehole and more like someone’s little brother, but then he looks at Remus and his eyes cloud over.

"C'est lui? Il ressemble à rien,” Regulus says to Sirius, looking at Remus though. The family resemblance between the brothers had always been mildly arresting, but the look on both of their faces is exact and reminds Remus that Sirius _chose_ to cut contact with himself, James and Peter.

"Oh ferme la, crétin." Sirius’ voice is a little sharp but the tone of it gives nothing away. Remus laments the fact he never studied French. He was always too caught up with the ancient languages, with Runes, with Latin, Ancient Greek at a push. Perhaps, he realises in the face of this brotherhood, it was that French reminded him far too much of Sirius.

At the look on the Black brothers’ faces, Remus once again feels like he’s the butt of a joke he doesn’t understand. He huffs a breath, far too close to the moon to deal with any of this, and steps past Sirius. This time the other man lets him and turns at the Disillusioned door to watch him.

“Moony, where do you g—”

Remus pauses at the doorway but doesn’t look over his shoulder. He knows the question Sirius is asking. Where does he spend the moon, is it a cellar or a forest, what does he do without Prongs, Wormtail and Padfoot, is he alone, does it _hurt?_ “Nowhere you know.”

* * *

April 1975

The moonlight burnt. It had always burnt, worse than the midday sun, worse than working out in the garden in August and forgetting sunscreen, worse than that extra-strength itching solution James and Sirius had concocted in third year.

With the added weight on Remus’ shoulders, it seemed even sharper. He wasn’t used to someone else being in the burning moonlight with him, within the walls of the Shack.

James raked a hand through his messy hair and stood from the foot of the bed where he had been nervously perched. “We’ll be fine, Moony.”

Remus could smell his fear. James was concerned, Remus knew, because although he knew _intellectually_ what to expect from a werewolf transformation, he knew it would be vastly different seeing someone he cared for in that situation. Remus knew because he saw the same look on his mother’s face the first time she stepped into the cellar just a moment too soon before moon-set.

Peter looked worried, turning his wand over and over in his hands as he was wont to do when particularly anxious. There was a singular callous on his forefinger that matched a knot on his wand. Remus smelled fear on his skin too, but it was mixed in with Pete’s familiar scent like he was perpetually nervous.

Sirius sat on the bed next to Remus, his fingers clenched into firm fists and pushed against the top of his knees. Remus thought about comforting him for a moment until he realised it would be strange for their sympathies to flow in that direction. He had a distinct feeling that Sirius would dislike any kind of sympathy in this sort of situation.

The opportunity to present anything remotely sympathetic faded away on the roll of distant April rain clouds that threw the bedroom of the Shack into sharp, silvery light. Remus grit his teeth against the pain and let his chin drop towards his chest.

“What—” Sirius cleared his throat and instinctively took the hand James gave him. They were always touching, the two of them, always close together, always something Remus vaguely envied for a reason he wasn’t quite sure of— “What do you usually do, when you wait?”

Remus smiled but the motion of it pulled awkwardly at his facial features, strung along his tendons like they didn’t _want_ to move that way. “Nothing. I sit… and try not to think about the pain.”

“Merlin,” James breathed before he could stop himself.

Sirius’ other hand dropped onto Remus’ shoulder, his elegant fingers just grazing but the touch burned under the moon and Remus held in a flinch as best he could, because Sirius was his _friend_. Sirius was _here_ , despite the monstrousness of it all. Not only that—Remus had to stop a bubble of disbelieving laughter from escaping his throat—but Sirius, James and Peter had become illegal Animagi for _him_.

Remus clung to the thought, the waves of acceptance from his _friends_ , as the moon broke through the clouds again and cast another shard of pain over his body. His breath came in short stabs. “You should leave. C—come back in when I’ve—when it’s— _ah_ —when it’s happened.”

Sirius’ fingers were still a ghost of sensation on his shoulder when Remus let the wolf take over to a symphony of howls and the rending of flesh and muscle.

Moony growled at first, hackles raised, claws dug into the floorboards, at the sight of the dog, stag and rat that stepped into the Shack. The stag kept its distance, the rat perched on its antlers. Moony scented the air for prey, but strangely, he found none. These three were… pack?

The dog had no qualms about keeping its distance from Moony and promptly bounded over on spring-like paws, tongue hanging from the side of its mouth. Moony growled, snapping his jaws in warning, but the dog paid him no heed, and instead planted its front paws heavily on the floorboards, bowing in the obvious motion of _play!_

Moony sniffed warily, once, twice, then again, before nipping playfully at the black dog’s snout and barrelling past him out into the freedom and wilderness of the Forbidden Forest. Moony had _never_ been outside before, never smelt grass by burying his snout in it, never been able to chase the scent of a rabbit from the undergrowth. The dog ran alongside him at every pace, sliding under fallen trees where Moony’s larger frame had to jump over them. The stag paraded the perimeter of the clearing they ended up in to ensure Moony didn’t get too close to the edges of the Forest, and later, when Moony was catching his breath, let the black dog clamber over its antlers. The rat observed their chases from the safety of a branch or the stag’s antlers, and when the dog and stag played together, the rat settled on Moony’s head for a nap.

Remus woke to the scent of the forest in the burgeoning dawn light. It was a combination of the _literal_ forest, mud in his hair and streaked across his skin, and the signature scent of Sirius’ magic, wild and free, as he cast a cleaning charm over Remus’ muddy form.

“Moony…” A breath against his cheek. Close, too close for friends.

Remus grasped his arm and levered himself up to sitting before his eyes managed to open. “Padfoot… Are—is everything okay?”

Sirius’ hand was on his shoulder again, fitting into the ghost of feeling left there the night before. The touch soothed him. “Everything’s fine, Moony. Sleep, it’s all okay. It was bloody _brilliant_.”

* * *

June 1982

The moon finds Remus in a small glade, sequestered away in the thick woods of Hafren. The Welsh forests remind him of his parents and he relishes the odd pang of grief in his chest as a distinct _feeling_. Remus has already stashed his wand into a small tree hollow, marked with a rune carved in its trunk, and taken off his good jacket. Mending charms make fabric thin and itchy, and he’d rather avoid using them, but he also refuses to stand naked in a forest waiting for the change. So mending charms it is. Out of the handful of forests Remus comes to for the full, Hafren is his favourite. It’s dense and sprawling enough to have little human interference—along with the concealment charms Moody had placed along the perimeter—and enough to enable him to shake off everything else and not worry about the wolf. Moony gets to run free, although most of the time he doesn’t want to. How odd it is to have the beast inside him as melancholy and pitiful as himself.

It had rained earlier in the day, so the forest smells even thicker, alive and writhing, allowing Remus graciously into its depths. It’s silent apart from the distant chirp of evening birdsong and the slow rattle of Remus’ own breathing, strained under the pain of the impending transformation.

So the _crack_ of Apparition and the accompanying heat of magic takes Remus by surprise. _No one_ Apparates here. Unless their name is Sirius Black. He’s looking around, wand in his hand, and when he turns to spot Remus he grins wide.

“Hello Moony.”

Moony, this close to the surface, recognises the scent of Padfoot and keens to get out. Remus grits his teeth, half expecting to feel sharp teeth, far too numerous. “Leave, Sirius.”

Sirius’ smile stays, but his eyes are a little cold. “You do this by yourself every month?”

Remus’ silence answers for him. He paces a wide circle around the perimeter of the clearing, arms loose at his sides, trying to ease the knot of tension that is forever knitting into the space beneath his left shoulder blade. He thinks it’s probably been there for six years. He tries to focus on it, that little bundle of spliced nerves, in lieu of the real pain of Sirius Black being in this clearing with him.

“What about the others?” Sirius is closer, having followed a half-pace behind him. He looks artfully dishevelled still, as he did two weeks ago, in a leather jacket, hair in a mussed plait, but with a pristinely-pressed white button-down shirt underneath. Remus can’t quite align his memories of Sirius with this man. He’s no longer a rebellious teen, but an adult who has found his place. It’s in his soul now, manicured by Alphard to rebel for the consequences, not the act of rebellion. Remus envies him for somehow knowing his place in the world when Remus feels distinctly separate from it.

 _We grew apart_ , Remus wants to say, _after you left us we all just stopped trying. I don’t have anyone now_. But instead he howls and falls to his knees, cracking pain sharding through him. Flesh tears, muscle snaps and warps, bones break. Remus, with the last thread of coherent thought he still has in these moments, hopes Sirius has left, and isn’t watching with some misplaced sense of pity.

Moony shakes off the rags of humanity and lunges for the other being in the clearing with him. In a moment, there is a black dog there, leaping back onto four feet. It cocks its head a little, as if to say _it’s me, Moony_.

Moony snarls and advances forward, backing the dog against a fallen tree trunk. The dog might be back now but Moony has had four years _alone_ , six years without the dog. The stag and the rat couldn’t run as much as he did, couldn’t keep up, wouldn’t play-fight, wouldn’t understand the intrinsic language Moony and the dog shared from their common canine ancestor.

The dog bounces back onto the tree trunk, tail still wagging, tongue flopping from the corner of its mouth. It wants to play, Moony knows, but he can’t forgive his pack-mate for deserting. Moony wants to run around like he did all that time ago, blazing through the Forbidden Forest with the dog at his side, the thud of earth under his paws.

But the dog left, the dog deserted us, and then the stag and the rat left because they had nothing left to stay for, and then it was just Moony, _alone_. Moony springs forward, two massive paws landing on the dogs shoulders. They tussle for a moment, the dog yipping and yelping, Moony snarling and snapping his jaws in a dominant warning. There’s fur in his teeth, and something inside him _screaming_ in protest, but then the dog wriggles out from underneath him and moves back, staring at Moony in disbelief. Tufts of black fur are whirling in the breeze around them. The dog’s eyes are steel and mercury and silver.

Moony huffs and turns away, taking two steps towards the thick of the forest. Moony wants to run, and if the dog wants to be here then it can keep up. Moony is _meant_ for the forest, the dense fur of his paws repelling the pools of muddy water they leap through, sharp claws ripping through the undergrowth to cut a path. He’s heedless of whether the black dog is keeping up with him. It’s a test of sorts, perhaps. Maybe Moony will welcome the black dog back if he can stay on his tail, follow him through woods foreign to him.

After a few moments, Moony hears the thundering falls of the dog’s paws a ways behind him, keeping up, following, not being left behind, together. He huffs a breath and runs faster.

At a small glade, Moony barrels into the black dog and knocks him bodily into a stagnant pool of mud. The dog doesn’t _smell_ quite like he used to six years ago, and Moony wants that back. The dog barks in annoyance, a sharp sound that echoes off the trees and instinctively, Moony is looking around for the stag and the rat. But they’re not here.

The black dog nudges into him, still whuffing softly, frustrated, until it shakes off the waters and sends a bleak, brownish spray across them both. Moony snarls, showing all of his teeth, hackles raised, at the way the black dog yips happily. The dog isn’t allowed to be happy. The dog left us, and when it left Moony was sad, and now he is alone.

Moony pins the dog with little struggle. It thinks he is playing at first, paws raised, tail still thumping happily, tongue lolling. Its grey eyes are shining and sparkling and that _something_ in Moony, the something foreign and cool and not so concerned with dominance, shivers at the remembrance of those eyes in other situations and it’s screaming again for things to be different. Moony does not understand. Moony wants to know why the black dog left him for so long, why its tail isn’t between its legs, whimpering softly, searching for penance.

Moony’s jaws close around the scruff of the dog’s neck. Immediately the dog goes still, a strangled little yelp in the back of its throat, muzzle tipped upwards, neck and belly exposed to the werewolf in a decade-old signature of submission between them. Moony doesn’t taste blood - something the thing inside of him is grateful for - and just sits back on his haunches, vaguely satisfied. The dog stays there, on its back, eyeing Moony with thinly veiled fear that circles around them.

The forest shivers around them as Moony lopes back into the thicket and Padfoot, Padfoot and not the black dog, follows behind him.

* * *

August 1980

The wolf packs were disgusting.

Remus thought he would never get the scent of blood and death and abject poverty out of his skin, sluiced out of his hair, from beneath his ragged fingernails. Not just the scent of course, but the sight of it all. The wolf packs lived in squalor, in dingy villages on the edges of forest clearings, houses made with mud and sticks, and maybe, if they were very lucky, an old hunter’s cottage, the owner of which had succumbed to an unknown fate. Remus wondered idly if the leg bone across the threshold of the adjacent mud hut was the hunter’s on a daily basis.

Remus came to consciousness in the pallid dawn light, barely filtering through the trees. He blinked blearily in the sight of it, testing each limb with a ginger stretch. The stench of blood was always worse after the full, after the tearing of flesh and skin and something like hazing for every newcomer, every runt of the litter who stumbled into their midst.

It had been three months with them, three months since contact with the outside world, three months since he has held his wand or put on shoes or seen someone who didn’t have the rabid look of death within their red-rimmed eyes. Remus was starting to wonder if he dreamt the whole wonderful affair of Hogwarts up. He thought he had dreamt up dinners in the Great Hall, summers by the lake, full moons in the Shack with his three best friends. The only thing that made him realise he didn’t dream it all was the lingering pain beneath his sternum of loneliness. How, in one moment, his view of Hogwarts had gone from bliss to a gnawing, empty hole, like the sore gum left behind by a rotten tooth once removed.

James and Peter were wonderful friends. Remus knew this. They had become Animagi for him without hesitation. They had sat through every moon with him, even after Sirius had gone to Beauxbatons, even after he saw the strange ache of grief in James’ face of losing his best friend, the nervous way Peter cleared his throat when James or Remus stumbled over the gap of Sirius in their conversation. It had only spiralled from there. Now Remus hadn’t seen James for months, hadn’t spoken to Peter in a year. He threw himself into the wolf packs, into whatever Dumbledore wanted of him, into whatever he was fucking _useful_ for.

Remus felt alone with the wolf packs, heedless of the sheer amount of people around him, the two people under blankets next to him, the remnants of bruises in the shape of fingertips over his torso. He felt nothing but alone.

Remus stood on shaky feet and redressed. He was vaguely thankful being skyclad wasn’t a prerequisite for this wolf pack, because Remus could never quite shake the shame associated with his nakedness. Last night was the last piece of the puzzle, though. Today, Remus could go back to Dumbledore and tell him the pack on the Isle of Lewis would rally to their cause when needed.

Remus stretched through his torso as he stepped out of the hut. Thankfully it was quiet enough that there were only one or two people around the central fire-pit of the settlement.

One of them, a broad man with a vicious looking scar that ran from sternum to belly (as if someone had gutted him, or tried to, Remus’ brain supplied) shrugged a massive shoulder at him. Remus sighed, his stomach roiling, his insides churning. Merlin, he felt like skin and bones, but in just a scant few hours, Remus would be back in the warmth of a real building, with more than a ragged shirt on his back.

Remus limped on his sore right leg—something must’ve not quite knitted back together correctly at moonset—out of the clearing and into the thick of the trees, tired eyes scanning for the path he had marked on his way in all that time ago. The large man must’ve thought he had gone hunting for food because no one followed him.

The pack thought him one of them, strewn with their scent, marked with their teeth, the same rabbit carcasses sitting in their guts. Remus didn’t retch anymore at the feeling of iron and bone heavy in his stomach. The pack would only realise he was gone at sunset that night. By then, Remus hoped to be hundreds of miles away. He found he didn’t lament the loss of them too much, although they had become some strange kind of comfort towards the end of it—bodies gave warmth no matter how vile they were.

A half-mile out of the werewolf settlement Remus found the tree where, three and a half moons ago, he had left his good coat and his wand balled up in the trunk, ten feet up. With a weary groan, his right knee finally popping back into place, Remus lifted himself up and groped around for his bundle. One sharp tug and the coat came unfurling out of its hiding place, his wand clattering from the sleeve when it snagged on a ragged edge of bark and ripped up the seam.

Great. Just what he needed. Remus shrugged on the coat, adding just another point to the ever growing list of Reasons He Didn’t Give a Fuck, and picked his wand up. It felt odd in his hand after three months, as if both of them had grown and changed and twisted exponentially in the bleakness of the forests this far north. The loose halves of the torn sleeve hung at his side and Remus nearly smiled at the feel of it. It seemed oddly fitting that his clothes reflected how ripped his soul felt.

Remus cast a mending charm on the sleeve of his coat, testing the near-threadbare line of stitching with callused fingers. Soon, the mending charms wouldn’t cut it. At least in London he should be able to manage without a jacket until October, perhaps. Then, a healing charm or two at the sticking, wet feeling in his right knee, and across the gashes in his arms. A bite mark on his shoulder throbbed nastily and Remus did what he could to reduce the lividity of it with another charm.

After a moment to collect himself, Remus gripped his wand—this strange piece of foreign magic after so long—and turned into a twist of Apparition that landed him in a small side alley in Stornoway. The owner of the pub there was a Wizard who gave Remus a vaguely frightened look when he opened the door to him. Then, his features settled as he took in the uneven slope of Remus’ shoulders and the tired—desperately fucking exhausted—look in Remus’ eyes.

“Aye, ye must be the laddie Dumbledore mentioned. Come in, come in.”

Oh, the kindness of strangers, Remus thought on a wry twist of lips. He stepped into the small room of the pub, assailed by the smell of hops and whisky and firewood. It, mercifully, didn’t smell like the forest.

The man peered at him as he moved around to the bar. “The Floo’s round the back, laddie. You wantin’ a kip and a piece before ye go back south?”

“Ah-” Remus leant against one of the old wooden tables, one hand splaying out to try and support his weight. Apparating for the first time in months had pulled on his threads like the gentle unravelling of a hem, a slow parabola towards uselessness. “Yes—yes thank you, that would be nice.”

The man nodded curtly and directed Remus around to a small adjoining hallway then to a living room of sorts. He gestured to the sofa and the blanket draped over the back, and it was all the invitation Remus needed to ease himself onto the cushions and fall into a sorely-needed sleep.

He woke a short time later to a cup of vaguely lukewarm tea and a ham roll on the arm of the sofa, feeling simultaneously better and worse for the opportunity to nap on something more comfortable than grass or muddied, bloodied furs. Remus ate in silence then rose and retraced his steps to find the old man leaning on the bar. He tried for a moment to pinpoint the time of day, but the walls were thick in the old building, and the glass dirtier than Remus felt. It was daytime, at least.

“Alright laddie?” the old man said, setting down the glass he was cleaning.

Remus just nodded, unused to small talk.

The old man smiled and lead him back into the adjoining hallway, then into another room. The grate of the Floo lingered with a dim green and when Remus dug his fingers into the powder he thought of soil, of the forest, of what he left behind without fail every month.

Back in London, in his tiny Muggle flat, swelteringly warm and humid—there was probably a leak somewhere, Remus mused, as he peered at the condensation in the windows—Remus found two letters in the small box he had affixed outside the living room window.

 _Remus_ —the first began. James had stopped using _Moony_ as a nickname around the same time they agreed it would be better not to meet up for the full moons. He seemed to recognise their nicknames were best kept to the golden memories of Hogwarts.

_I was hoping I would catch you, but I think you’ll be away._

_Harry James Potter was born on the 31_ _st_ _of July. Both mum and baby are well. Lily says she’s bloody glad to have the sprog_ _out_ _of her. He’s beautiful, Remus. He’s what makes this all worthwhile. I hope you’ll come and see us. He’ll be able to tell you where we are now._ [He was Dumbledore. Their old Headmaster always held all the cards.]

_All our love,_

_James, Lily and Harry_

Remus smiled at the words, tracing them with one still-muddy finger. It was always easier to say how much they loved each other over letters. Remus thought perhaps he, James and Peter loved the memories of each other. They loved what they used to have, loved the _idea_ of their friendship, of a bond like brotherhood. But in reality, it wasn’t that simple. It was all off, somehow, all slightly skewed, like the edges didn’t quite match up to how they were in the blissful blurred halls of imagination.

He set the letter down whilst sniffing away wistful tears of remembrance. Harry _would_ be beautiful, of course. He would be perfect, a perfect rendition of two of the best people Remus knew. James and Lily were perfect sculptures of goodness, and their son would be too. Remus sort of knew he would likely never see him. It felt strange to turn up on their doorstep, a wolf wearing a human skin, an awful spectre of the Moony they knew at school.

The second letter was addressed much the same, a second from James. Worry prickled the back of Remus’ neck like the hot breath of another wolf. He hoped that it would not bear bad news.

_Remus,_

_I sent a letter about Harry to Sirius. No reply. I don’t know why I’m telling you this, but I thought you should know. I would’ve told you if I’d heard from him too. I’d hoped Harry’s birth would’ve spurred something in him, perhaps, seeing as the wedding hadn’t._

_Maybe he’s dead? It’s an awful thought, but maybe so. I can’t help but thinking there must be a reason he hasn’t been in touch with any of us… After what I thought we had, after what- after what we all did for each other, did for you?_

It hung in the air—what you and Sirius had. James, ever the romantic, had thought it beyond sweet that his two best friends had hooked up, and when, he lamented, finally when, Lily would give him the time of day, they would make the best double dates and live with each other out of Hogwarts.

_Anyway, I’m sorry to bring that up. I guess I’ve just been thinking on it recently. What would’ve happened if everything was different. All the late nights, the lack of sleep—Harry is a noisy baby, like father like son, eh?_

_I think I’ll stop trying soon, with Sirius, I mean. It’s a waste of parchment and ink, a waste of energy for the owls. He clearly doesn’t want to talk to us._

_Please do come and visit us. Lily and I miss you so, and we’d love for Harry to meet his Uncle Moony._

_All our love,_

_James, Lily and Harry_

Remus set the letter down and cried.

* * *

June 1982

Remus wakes to the burn of his thighs, the hard knots of tension in his calves, and the rawness of his fingertips. He wakes to the warmth of a body against his back.

That’s what startles him.

Because it’s a body he recognises. Distantly, like the return to a childhood bedroom, or the nostalgia of a particular scent, or seeing a photograph of yourself you don’t quite remember being taken. It’s something his _soul_ sinks in to. The scent of the forest, wild, quick, hot, dirty, brash, _beautiful_.

Sirius.

Remus is tired—fucking exhausted—but the arm around his waist and the chest against his back feels _so_ wonderful. It feels like a thousand pardons and in the face of the feeling Remus all but forgets the last six years.

Sirius puffs a hot breath over the back of Remus’ neck where the velvety hairs shift and send a ripple of sensation down the length of Remus’ bruised spine. Everything hurts in the pre-dawn light, but it seems distant. A problem for future-Remus. At his shiver, Sirius shifts against his back and presses his hot mouth against the nape of Remus’ neck, pliable and soft in his sleep, or maybe half-waking.

Are they in the Shack, or on the forest floor in Wales? Reality seems to blur.

Remus makes a vague attempt to move. He wants to push away the arm of this stranger around his middle, stand and redress. Because, _Merlin_ , he’s naked. Sirius is clothed, as he always was thanks to being an Animagus and not a Dark creature. Remus feels vulnerable and raw and split open and clenches his fingers in the dirt to try and summon the wherewithal to move. His body feels a stranger to him, just like Sirius’ does.

Casting his gaze around, Remus finds a rabbit carcass in lieu of his clothes, and immediately becomes aware of the taste of iron behind his teeth, the heaviness of bones and gore in his stomach. The taste of it echoes in his throat, but it doesn’t bother him any longer.

Remus tries again to stand but the arm stays fast around his waist and he finds he doesn’t _want_ to move. He sinks into Sirius, who is all loose-limbed and lean in his elegance still, matured from rangy youth to something suave and beautiful Remus does not recognise. The button of his jeans is cool against Remus’ lower back, and then he shifts and his erection is hot and hard and Remus moves back against it despite his best efforts.

“Moons,” is what Sirius breathes into the back of Remus’ neck, pressed close, his nose a little squished, his teeth a vague suggestion against tender flesh and velvet hairs. Then he rocks his hips and Remus moans in the back of his throat.

Sirius smiles against his skin, the shape of it so obvious, as if Remus would recognise it even if he were blind, and slides against him again, the rasp of his fine denim jeans against Remus’ arse. The contact feels _so good_ even though Remus hates himself at every breath for it. One of Sirius’ elegant hands snakes over the obvious valleys of Remus’ ribs and down his pale, quivering belly.

Moony was the one in charge last night, but now Remus feels bared and vulnerable as Sirius’ fingers stroke down over him. He feels caught, strung up, as Sirius rolls his hips forward in idle search of pleasure, warm and sleepy in the early June light.

“S— _ah_ —” Remus moans and lets his head fall back onto Sirius’ shoulder in a hollow shadow of submission, like that windowsill at the Potters house, like a dozen other moons where Sirius nudged him back towards humanity with his fingers, his mouth, his sweet laughter.

Perhaps it’s _Stop_ he wants to say, or _Shit,_ or _Sirius,_ but it doesn’t matter because no words come out of his mouth and Sirius is pressing against him, long lines, long fingers, long strands of hair over his shoulder, long breaths— _oh_ , it’s been so long. It’s been a year, maybe more, since that brief, ill-fated attempt at a relationship with Dearborn. Too many fumbles in the dark, devoid of any real emotion, devoid of anything except a need to get off in the twilight hours, wondering whether they’ll wake again midst the terror of this fucking war.

But here is different, because it’s Sirius, and Remus is rocking back, grinding into Sirius’ crotch and shuddering with every gasp against the back of his neck. One hand is pillowed under his head, but he reaches back with the other to grasp at Sirius’ hair, thick and as black as pitch that flows through his fingers and stains them deep and dark and it feels _so good_.

 _You left me_ , Remus thinks as he twists shards of silken hair between his fingers just as Sirius’ wrist twists in delightful facsimile.

_You didn’t fight for us and I would’ve given you everything. I did, didn’t I?_

Sirius moans into the nape of Remus’ neck, one hand stroking with punishing slowness over his length. Sirius murmurs a wandless lubrication charm and his magic takes Remus’ breath away. It’s still as hot and wild as ever, makes Remus’ magic flare in response, seeking out an old friend, whirling together in the clearing. Remus’ hips jerk into the circle of Sirius’ fingers, the magic of their duality thrumming through him and _Merlin_ , is that him moaning? He _hates_ himself for it.

“Merlin, Moony—” Sirius says as he tips his head a little to pull at the inky strands wound through Remus’ fingers and rolls his hips against the cleft of Remus’ arse.

How many times has it gone like this, in the past? How many times, in the Shack, in their beds, in whatever space they could get at Hogwarts? And how many times has Remus lain in the forest upon waking, deathly cold and alone? And now Sirius has the audacity to turn back up, uninvited in every way, and moan like _that_ against Remus’ ear, his cock hard against Remus’ embarrassingly naked body. Remus—the man, not the wolf—has always submitted to Sirius Black.

Remus is powerless to stop it, unable to pull away from the inexorable downfall of his body and heart and sanity and soul in the hands of the stranger at his back.

 _You didn’t fight for us. I don’t know you, I don’t know you_ trips on repeat in Remus’ mind even as he moans and bucks his hips and grinds back against Sirius’ cock still beneath his jeans. Sirius moans too, hot, breathy things over Remus’ neck, into his hair, over his shoulder, pressed together.

Control of his body is relinquished to Remus all at once—with no real heraldry or fanare—and he shoves Sirius’ arm away. He scrambles to his feet and murmurs _Accio wand—_ the only wandless spell he’s ever mastered—all in one breath. Remus is panting through great mouthfuls of shame and lingering arousal as his wand smacks into his palm, refusing to look at this stranger who appears like Sirius. He ignores his painful erection as he summons his clothes and pulls them on with a few quick mending charms.

“Your magic,” Sirius murmurs, voice creaky with awe, waking and desire, and Remus’ gaze snaps to him. Sirius looks fucked, although neither of them have come. He’s stood up now too, as if he might be ready to fight or run or close the gap between them, his chest still heaving. There’s dirt in his hair and his white button-down is filthy and the bulge in his trousers is like a beacon Remus can’t look away from. His sinful lips are parted a little, like he’s the one tasting the air and shivering naked under magic from a decade-old bond that he was _sure_ he’d fucking shaken.

“You don’t—” Remus casts his hand at the patch of dirt they had been splayed upon— “You don’t get that. Not now.”

Sirius’ mask flickers again, just a glimpse of what is underneath, and it looks a little like hurt. Then it’s gone and he looks assured and cocky and tilts his head up in a challenge. “Moony missed me.”

“Moony missed having company of any sort,” Remus fires back. “He doesn’t care that it’s Padfoot.”

“Did _you_ miss me, Moony?” Sirius strides closer. Remus can feel his magic winnowing and spiralling out around him despite the weariness of the moon. He doesn’t know whether it’s reaching for Sirius or pushing him away.

Remus raises his wand because he can feel the answer bubbling up in his throat and he won’t, he _can’t_ , let it out. He has tried for six years to move past this spectre from the halls of Hogwarts, tried to accept that that part of his life was over, and now Sirius is testing every sore spot, needling every vein, digging up every grave. Remus has spent half a decade building walls and he’ll be fucking damned if Sirius pulls them down. Yes, he is hurting, yes, he misses Sirius with every inch of his body, yes, he felt something for the first time in years waking up with Sirius’ breath on his neck, but he does not know this man. The Sirius he knew walked out of Hogwarts in May 1976, and this Beauxbatons-educated, fine upstanding rebel with a good haircut is a stranger.

“ _Don’t_ , Sirius. You’re not allowed any of this, because you _left me_. You didn’t fight for us, and you don’t get to turn up and upend _everything_ I’ve worked for.”

Sirius raises one dark eyebrow, the corner of one silver eye lifting, then the corner of his mouth, pink and wet. “It doesn’t look like you’ve worked for much.”

Before he realises, like he’s just blinking and everything flashes for a moment, the point of Remus’ wand is stuck in the soft flesh behind Sirius’ jawbone. He leans in close, post-moon tremors running through him. He needs to sleep but there is adrenaline in his veins instead of blood or the tides or pure apathy. “In school I was _so_ grateful for friends that I let you get away with _everything_. I don’t have that any more. I’m not a pushover, _Black_ , and I won’t hesitate to hex you. You’re not the boy I loved.”

A little whimpering noise comes from Sirius’ throat as his eyes widen in shock and Remus realises just what he said. “You never said that before.”

“We were fifteen,” Remus says, frantically trying to backpedal. His wand is still jammed under Sirius’ chin, knuckles white, and his knees are shaking.

Sirius’ eyes are strangely cloudy and his smirk has slid from his face like an oil slick, leaving a rainbow of utter destruction behind. “You loved me.”

“Yes,” Remus hisses, deciding he has precisely nothing to lose, and maybe honesty will mean it all ends sooner. He steps back, frowning at the utterly stricken look on Sirius’ face, like his whole word has upended. _Good_ , Remus thinks. “I did, past tense.” He points his wand at Sirius again, is he convincing himself or Sirius? Does it taste bitter because it’s a lie or the terrible truth? Remus’ hands are shaking, his whole body is shaking with the rushing tide of the moon. He can’t do this. He doesn’t want another six years of trying to get over Sirius Black, because quite clearly, the other man has moved on. “If you turn up at my door again I won’t hesitate.”

Sirius doesn’t say anything, his lips still parted a little like there’s the intention of speech behind his teeth but he can’t make the words come. His arms are loose by his sides, his clothes and skin streaked with dirt.

Remus wants to scream, but instead he turns and steps into the tight heat of Apparition, landing in the back alley behind his flat. He can deal with Dumbledore tomorrow—right now he needs to shower, sleep and forget about Sirius Black.

 _Merlin burning,_ Remus thinks as he crawls into bed, _present tense. Present fucking tense._

* * *

March 1976

The forest. Clean sheets. Fertile soil. Sweat. Magic.

Even after nearly a year of sharing the full moon with his friends, Remus was surprised every time to wake up with barely any injuries. He was even more surprised to wake up with Sirius pressed against his back, every month. Unfailingly, since that snog behind Greenhouse Two in shrouds of smoke, Sirius would wake him with gentle kisses to the nape of his neck, and the rushing flood of his magic, casting healing charms with the same idle elegance he seemed to do everything.

“Morning Moony,” Sirius said in a breath across Remus’ neck.

“Pads…” Remus’ throat was raw from howling, snarled and tender from screaming, but Sirius’ breath seemed to fix everything just like his magic did. “Your magic…”

Sirius’ smile felt obvious against Remus neck as he reached over to set his wand onto the windowsill above them. Remus turned onto his back with a soft hiss of breath between his teeth and was rewarded with the sight of Sirius Black beside him.

“My magic likes your magic,” Sirius mused as he leant down to press a kiss to the angle of Remus’ collarbone. “Are you hurting anywhere?”

Remus smiled, gingerly lifting one hand to caress the high point of Sirius’ cheekbone. Usually, he’d be vaguely embarrassed about this kind of affection, closeness, openness, but in the dawn light after moonset Remus wanted all the physical comfort he could get. And Sirius always gave in abundance.

“No, not anymore.” Remus sank back into the sheets, letting Sirius’ residual magic filter over him like the gentle wash of current, like the little brook behind his parent’s house, nothing like the raging tides of the sea that roiled inside of him every 28 days.

Sirius pressed a line of kisses along Remus’ chest, following an old scar. Remus shivered with every bit of contact, every puff of Sirius’ breath as they wound together. “Good,” Sirius murmured into his skin, his grey eyes shuttering. Sirius’ school shirt hung from his shoulders, the cotton of his trousers against Remus’ legs, warm and safe under the blankets with him, but in these moments Remus thought they might as well both be naked for how easily they could see each other.

“Do we have time? Where are Prongs and Wormy?” Remus croaked, fingers threading through the inky mass of black hair trailing over his shoulder. Sirius’ hair was like a beast all of its own, somehow treading that rebellious yet elegant line Sirius himself seemed to embody.

“Downstairs,” Sirius whispered against Remus’ collarbone, tracing the dawn light shadow there with his tongue. “Thought they’d give us some space.”

“Yeah,” was all Remus managed to say in response.

Sirius continued to map his way across Remus’ torso with his lips, tongue and teeth, humming happily whenever he drew a particularly ragged breath from Remus’ lips. Remus sank into his touch, legs parted, one hand tangled in Sirius’ hair, the other with fingers curled around the headboard of the rickety little single bed in the corner of the Shack. He felt like a King, though, splayed under this gorgeous creature with a mouth like ambrosia and all the affection Remus thought he could ever need.

“What happened last night? I remember—” Remus blinked, long and slow, summoning up the realms of his memory that Moony occupied, trying to wade through the treacle of the wolf in his mind— “I remember trying to chase a deer, a real deer.”

“Mhmm.” With a hum that rumbled across Remus’ sternum, Sirius smiled. _Godric, I love you_ , Remus thought with a sharp pang that started in his throat and ended somewhere around his toes. _I love you with everything I know in the world_. “Prongs dissuaded you, then you and I went running, tried to find that pond we found back in January.”

“Did we?” Remus was almost back asleep again, arousal simmering under his skin thanks to Sirius’ kisses, but it seemed unimportant. He knew they would have a long time to catalogue the maps of each others bodies and learn every shuddering exhale. They had their flat in Wizard London to get, Remus’ teaching qualification from Oxford (the shagging across the desk) to achieve, Sirius’ motorbike to buy and picnics in the sun to have. They could leave Hogwarts and accomplish all these things they talked about and still have time for lazy Sunday mornings or moonset mornings to love each other.

“Mmm?” Sirius’ hands were skimming over his shoulders in long, smooth motions now, easing out that knot of muscle that tried to settle beneath his left wing-bone every month, somehow pulling from the front, the way his tendons seemed to shift and snap with the wolf, the reconstruction of his body every month tangling something somewhere. But Sirius’ hands, firm and sure, the heat of his skin, the fire of his magic, fixed everything.

“Did we find the pond?” They had this summer to look forward to as well, at the Potters’ perhaps. They had a lake there, maybe they could go swimming, or else trek through the rolling hills behind the house in search of Faerie rings or Bowtruckle nests or something else wonderful and carefree and so quintessentially summer. Time seemed unimportant, Remus blinking long and slow, maybe drifting between snippets of conversation.

“Nah,” Sirius hummed, his mouth now trailing up the inside of Remus’ arm. Remus knew Sirius wasn’t trying to arouse anything in him—Merlin, he’d _know_ if Sirius was trying to turn him on—but it was just Sirius’ way to bring him back to humanity after the wolf. Remus tangled his fingers in a twist of hair behind Sirius’ ear, his thumb brushing over the curl of cartilage there. “We’ll find it next month.”

“Yeah.” All of a sudden, at the reminder of next month, and the prospect of the month after that and the month after that, Remus’ throat constricted with a bout of unshed tears. He tried to blink them away, pressing the pads of his fingers against Sirius’ skull in a brief motion of thank-you that had formed between them—Padfoot _and_ Sirius both loved scritches—but they stayed. “Thank you.”

“Of course, don’t be bloody stu—” Sirius sat up, swimming into Remus’ vision as he stared at the ceiling to try and will away this rush of emotion. “Moons, hey. What’s wrong?”

Remus shook his head, smiling as Sirius cupped his cheek, leaning into the touch like it was all he needed (It was, wasn’t it?). “Nothing, I just- I just- _thank you_ , for doing this, with me, for me.”

“Moony- Remus, of course. _Of course_ ,” Sirius ushered out as the shape of his lips found Remus’ forehead, his nose, his cheek. “You won’t _ever_ need to do this alone again. Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs. That’s how it goes.”

“Yeah,” Remus whispered as he sank back into the bed under Sirius’ ministrations.

“Padfoot and Moony, Rem,” Sirius said, his fingers carding through Remus’ curls. “That’s how it is.”

* * *

July 1982

Remus stares at the scroll unfurled on his kitchen table, amongst the dirty crockery, the broken quills and the stack of papers he’s editing for a Muggle publishing firm. It had arrived earlier that day, dropped into his palm by a distinctly ordinary-looking barn owl.

_We have much to discuss. AD_

He doesn’t doubt its authenticity—the _AD_ is written with such a flourish only capable of Dumbledore and it’s typical of him to summon Remus with as little as possible—but he doesn’t want to go. Remus has had three weeks of burying his head in the sand, of blocking out memories with a staggering ability to entangle himself in self-loathing and a vague distaste for surviving despite being unable to do anything but. He’s been staring at the note all morning, wondering whether to just incinerate it, or actually do as Dumbledore expects and drop everything (as if he has anything to do) and go to see him.

Maybe, Remus reasons with himself, he will get some answers about what the Black brothers have been doing. Mercifully, Sirius has taken him seriously—no pun fucking intended—and hasn’t turned up on his doorstep uninvited. Remus is pretty sure he would’ve hexed him if he had, if only for the pain his handsome face invites into Remus’ otherwise cold heart.

With a sigh of resignation—Merlin, his whole life is just resignation, isn’t it?—Remus stands from the kitchen table, drains his hours-old cup of tea in one tidy gulp and shrugs on his good jacket. This one has lasted a good few years, after his trip to Stornoway if memory serves, but it’s starting to get thin, near threadbare at the seams from mending charms and Muggle sewing. He’ll be fine this summer, but in all likelihood the winter will call for a new coat.

Assuming Remus lives to see winter.

It’s not that he _wants_ to die. He’s just not so fussed if he doesn’t make it. After all this time, he thinks there would be better people to have survived the war. People without a beast beneath their breastbone, people with a future and not just a past. Many of those ‘better’ people have died in the past two years—the Prewett’s, Benjy Fenwick, Mary MacDonald, all the McKinnons—but somehow, Remus Lupin, half-breed, queer, misanthrope, _failure, beast_ , has survived.

In the alleyway beneath his flat, Remus Apparates to the space behind the Hog’s Head. He ducks through the back door after a long glance around to ensure there’s no one lurking and steps right through the Disillusioned wall. Remus promptly wishes he’d stayed at home, because Sirius is there, again, reclining in one chair, with Regulus next to him.

“Ah, good afternoon Remus, how are you?” Dumbledore asks, his voice lilting and crystalline, his half-smile below his half-moon glasses taunting.

Remus does not look at Sirius, but he feels his magic flare—the forest, fiery, wild—as he snaps his fingers to light a cigarette. Remus feels his own magic throb in response as he nods stiffly and straightens his coat. “What did you need, Albus?”

Dumbledore motions to an armchair—opposite Sirius, Godric dammit—and Remus has no choice but to sink into it. He finally lifts his eyes to look at Sirius, smoking with the same insouciance he always used to do everything. His silver eyes are swirling and bright, but they’re atop similar purplish stains of sleeplessness that Remus thinks must be a permanent addition to his own face. He glances at Remus, his mouth twitching around the butt of his cigarette—it’s a different brand than he used to smoke, French perhaps—but then he looks away back to Dumbledore.

Regulus’ cool gaze pins him for a moment before he leans to his brother and murmurs something Remus can’t hear this far away from the full. It’s probably in sodding French anyway. Whilst Sirius still looks like Sirius, just older, more refined, more of a _berk_ , Regulus looks entirely different to what Remus remembers from Hogwarts. His previously close cut hair is a little longer around his ears now, and there’s a branching scar that starts at his jawline and streaks down beneath the collar of his shirt. More than that, it’s his expression—he carries himself differently. It’s a horrifyingly familiar look—the war veteran, the survivor, the expression Remus sees on his old school friends’ faces when he does run into them at Order meetings. Regulus does not try to hide his expression, he wears it like a badge, radiating pain and a strange pride and it makes Remus entirely uncomfortable. He swiftly looks back to Sirius, remembering breath on the back of his neck, fingers mapping his body like he wanted to commit this new Remus to memory. Sirius doesn’t look at him.

Dumbledore’s eyes flicker between the trio, and Remus is immediately sure the old man has orchestrated all of this. “Remus, I wanted to thank you for the work you did regarding the Hogwarts founders. It has been instrumental in this.” Remus simply nods, his gaze filtering back to his old Headmaster. “Now, I regret being unable to tell you this earlier, but now is the time. Are you familiar with the concept of a Horcrux?”

The conversation is a blur and Remus blinks rapidly at every new piece of information to try and process it. Voldemort made Horcruxes. We don’t know how many. Regulus found Salazar Slytherin’s locket in a cave, he and Sirius worked together to figure out what it was and remove it from the cave. They both nearly died retrieving it—Remus is proud that he doesn’t flinch at that. There are plans to destroy it eventually, once we know more. They’re on the trail of more. Riddle loved Hogwarts, and if there is a Horcrux of Salazar’s, then there is likely three more for the other founders.

“Ravenclaw’s diadem,” Sirius says, breaking his silence for the first time. Remus feels sort of bewildered and the coolness of the Black brothers opposite him only makes it worse. Sirius knows all of this, Sirius has been a step ahead of him, Sirius is above him, better, like always. Remus stares at him for a moment as Sirius studies the end of his cigarette before flicking away the column of ash. “I think it’s at Hogwarts.”

Remus raises an eyebrow. Up until now it’s been _we_ and _they_ and something very humble and collaborative, but now Sirius is resolutely _I_ and self-assured. Remus hates how Sirius seems to have the upper hand right now.

Breath on the back of his neck, hot kisses, the suggestion of teeth.

“You do, do you?” Remus says, clearing his throat. Sirius isn’t looking at him, just staring at his cigarette. He looks refined and beautiful, all hard lines and sharp edges and Remus feels his own edges getting ragged and blurry just looking at him. Regulus is watching him closely though, staring in lieu of Sirius, cool eyes and an even cooler expression.

“Yes, in the Room of Hidden Things.” Sirius finally lifts his gaze to look at Remus. His eyes are cloudy and dark, tendrils of hair falling into them, brushing the tops of his cheekbones. “Don’t you remember?”

* * *

January 1976

“Quick, in, in!” Sirius dove through the door that had just appeared, Remus hot on his heels.

The door slammed shut behind them as soon as Remus crossed the threshold, arms piled high with the evidence of their latest prank. High on adrenaline and new moon energy, Remus laughed, leaning back against the door and letting his eyes close for a moment. “Merlin, that was close.”

“Yeah, phew,” Sirius breathed, dropping his armful of Slytherin robes. He reached out to pat the wall of the room. “Thanks, Room of Requirement.”

Remus, stifling another snicker of laughter, turned into the room and immediately felt his jaw drop. “Padfoot… look.”

“Merlin’s balls,” Sirius uttered as he turned to see the view Remus did. The room rolled on and on before them, ceilings at least 30 feet tall, filled to the brim with _things_. Remus thought it looked a little like his Aunt Shelley’s house when they went to visit that one time—he was twelve and Remus didn’t know what his mother meant when she said _hoarder_ but now he knew. There were piles of all sorts, giant stuffed animals, a tower of antique-looking bird cages, several suits of armour, some disassembled. Remus thought the whole room was in danger of either collapsing in on itself or exploding entirely.

“What the hell did you ask for, Pads?” Remus moved away from the wall, tossing the evidence of the prank aside forgotten, to explore into the avenues of the room.

Sirius was already a few feet into the piles of things, picking up things. “I just asked for somewhere to hide this stuff,” he said, studying a very old looking contraption Remus thought might take their fingers if they weren’t careful.

Remus shook his head, looking around. “I don’t think… I don’t think this is just for us, Pads…” He followed an avenue of the room, kicking aside some marbles, craning his neck to look up at a stack of things at least 15 foot high. “Look, isn’t that James’ old broomstick from third year, the one that broke?”

“Yeah, I think so?” Sirius practically materialised behind him, throwing an arm over Remus’ shoulders. In his other hand he was holding a large broadsword streaked in red. Remus hoped it was rust and not blood.

Remus had to laugh. “Oh Godric, Pads, put that down please.”

“Never!” Sirius stepped back and brandished the sword. Remus ducked and nearly went careening into a pile of cauldrons. “I’m defending your honour Rem. Snivellus so much as looks at you funny and I’ll lop his head off!” Sirius leapt up onto a pile of books—Merlin, how was he always so elegant and refined and beautiful? _I love you,_ Remus thought—and swung the sword around in a long arc as if he were indeed beheading a particularly greasy Slytherin.

Remus leant on a large dresser and tilted his head to watch him. The light in the room seemed to come from a million directions and guttered like an open flame and Remus thought Sirius would look more suited to a painting despite his scruffy uniform. “If you call me a damsel in distress I’m going to start pelting you with things.”

Sirius grinned and set the point of the sword on the ground so he could lean on the handle. “Well, I do rescue you from the Shrieking Shack every month.”

“Oh piss off,” Remus said as he seized a handful of dominos and threw them at Sirius.

The other boy’s barking laughter echoed through the room as he stepped off the books. The sword clanged on the ground as Sirius let the handle go and crowded Remus against the dresser. “You’re my Moony in distress, I’ll come rescue you from whatever you need.”

Remus tipped his chin back, staring up at Sirius looking down at him, smiling wryly, eyes flickering down over him. “Oh? And if I need rescuing from a knight with a big ego?” But his voice was soft and his hands found the line of Sirius’ waist.

“Mmm,” Sirius murmured as his fingers grazed up Remus’ throat to tilt his chin up towards him. Remus sank into his touch—like he could do anything else, his body was hardwired to Sirius—and let his eyes flutter shut. “I don’t think you do…”

“You know,” Remus breathed as Sirius’ mouth found his jaw, the rasp of his teeth, the swirl of his tongue. Remus’ body was still jittering with adrenaline at their fleeing from Filch and now Sirius was only fanning the flames. “Knights generally have to _prove_ their favour to the object of their affections; win jousts, slay dragons, win tournaments.”

“Oh?” Sirius grinned, his tongue swirling over Remus’ fluttering pulse. “How about me on my knees, Moons?”

Remus shuddered at the thought of it, braced against the dresser, wondering if his own knees would give out—his body seemed to think prostrating himself at the foot of Sirius Orion Black was his primary purpose. “Might work,” he ushered out, voice quaking.

Sirius chuckled, sliding his palm down the front of Remus’ shirt and over the burgeoning hardness beneath his trousers. “Just maybe?” _Merlin_ , his fingers were sinful, skilful, elegant, and currently unzipping Remus’ fly and then his brain didn’t want to work.

Remus let out a shuddery breath, dropping his head back to stare up at the ceiling and bare his throat to Sirius’ mouth, which was just as sinful, skilful and elegant and currently biting over the tender column of Remus’s neck. “Godric, Pads…”

“Hey,” Sirius whispered into his neck, his voice full of mirth, his fingers still circling over Remus’ crotch and taking away almost all of his higher functions besides the part of his brain that wanted to cant his hips forward. “Look, there’s a lovely crown for my Moony in distress.” Then he stepped away and reached over the dresser to snatch up a small piece of jewellery that looked something like a tiara.

Remus rolled his eyes and shoved Sirius in the shoulder. It was a pretty tiara, Remus had to admit, all fine filigree, opals and sapphires, if you liked that sort of thing. He thought Lily or Meadowes might look lovely in it. But he didn’t want it on his bloody head when Sirius was halfway through giving him a mind-blowing handjob. “Your Moony is gonna be in bloody distress if you don’t cut it out.”

Sirius’ laughed again, trying to set the tiara on Remus’ curls. “It suits you Moons! The blue really brings out your eyes!”

“Ten seconds ago you had your hands down my pants, Pads, I’d really like it if we could get back to that!” Remus batted at his hands, trying to push them away. “Put that damn crown down.”

“Okay, okay!” Sirius discarded the tiara back into a pile of junk. “I’ll find you a proper crown, how about that?”

Remus slid his arm around Sirius’ waist to pull the other boy back towards him. His mouth found Sirius’ collarbone, exposed beneath his half-unbuttoned shirt, savouring the taste of Sirius’ skin, the warmth that was always there, the smell of his cologne and the ever-lingering scent of his magic. “Maybe _after?”_ Remus pressed his erection into Sirius’ thigh, only a step or two above actually just rutting against his boyfriend in lieu of his magical fingers.

“Your wish is my command, my king,” Sirius whispered, his fingers—mercifully—wrapping back around Remus’ erection. Remus huffed a laugh, appreciating the sentiment but knowing it wasn’t entirely true. Sirius was Remus’ world, and he didn’t mind one bit.

* * *

July 1982

Hogwarts in the summer is a strange experience, but Remus is distantly glad that the halls are empty and not teeming with students. Term only finished a few days earlier, but Remus feels transported back to 1975 as he walks up to the huge doors next to Sirius Black. Only, of course, he’s half a decade older and infinitely more weary. And, of course, he’s walking next to a man who looks enough like the boy he loved for it to hurt.

Dumbledore and Regulus had left them at the gates, Dumbledore with a damn twinkle in his eye and Regulus with that strange, cool look in his. The scar down his jaw had caught the afternoon light and looked more like claws and made Remus think of the way pain spirals through his body at the moon. Sirius and Regulus had just nodded and clasped hands when they had parted ways and Remus had started up the path towards Hogwarts to avoid looking at them.

“It’s strange being back,” Sirius admits as they wait for a staircase. Remus hasn’t looked his way yet. He’s still seething that Dumbledore deemed it appropriate for the two of them to go into Hogwarts together. Couldn’t Sirius go with Regulus? Couldn’t they have just left Remus to wallow alone in the dregs of his miserable life? But no, Dumbledore decided Remus would have to accompany the eldest Black child into Hogwarts to retread his memories and retrieve a Horcrux from a room where one of his sweetest memories resides. They had found it together before, so the best course of action to retrace those steps would be to do it in the same company as before. But Dumbledore didn’t seem to understand —or just ignored completely—that Remus and Sirius were entirely different men now.

“Is it?” Remus asks without looking sideways at Sirius, but the other man is in his periphery, like he always is, spectre or not. Was he always this tall, always this lithe and broad and sinuous all at once? He’s in another button-down, black this time, beneath a leather jacket probably more expensive than six months rent for Remus’ little Muggle flat.

“Yeah. Beauxbatons is different. It’s a big chateau, lots of sprawling gardens and fountains.”

“That’s nice.” Remus looks out over the main staircase, trying not to see after-images of his teenage years. He sees his friends there, the four of them traipsing down from Gryffindor Tower towards the Great Hall for breakfast, laughing and joking with each other. He sees Sirius waiting for him after his prefect rounds, ready to sneak out behind the Greenhouses to smoke a joint and make out.

“Look, Moony—” _Don’t call me that_ , Remus bites back— “we need to be civil to each other. We have a job to do, and lives hang in the balance. Prongs, and the Prongslet-”

“No.” Remus doesn’t realise he’s shouting until the words come out of his mouth and he whirls to face Sirius on the staircase. “You don’t get to talk about Harry. You didn’t answer James’ letters when he told you he and Lily got together, or when they got married, or when Harry was born. You didn’t answer _any_ of his letters. So you don’t get to be worried about Harry.” He jabs his finger into Sirius’ chest, glad he’s on the step above him so that their eyes are level. “ _We_ have that covered. James’ _friends_ get to worry about him. There is no _we_ here, Sirius.”

Sirius raises his hands to shoulder level—the closest Sirius will ever get to surrender—whilst still looking so utterly _above_ it all. “Alright, Moony, alright.” How does he still sound so condescending? How is it that Remus has just tried to put him in his place—rightly so—and Sirius still comes off as comfortable, cocky and still infuriatingly fucking handsome?

The journey up to the seventh floor is long. It feels like the staircases are tormenting Remus by making him spend more time than strictly necessary with Sirius Black. It lodges in his throat like heartburn and Remus feels like everywhere he looks he sees memories of he and Sirius—pressed into little alcoves and kissing like the other boy’s mouth is oxygen, running away from Filch or McGonagall, holding hands and laughing, Sirius’ arm around Remus’ shoulder as he helps him up from the Hospital Wing after the full.

“I missed this place, you know,” says Sirius with this wistful note in his voice that makes Remus want to scream and leave, fuck this mission, fuck Horcruxes, fuck Dumbledore and all of his damn business.

Remus stops at the top of the staircases and gapes at the apparent ease with which Sirius says those words. How could he miss a place he left so easily? Why the hell didn’t he fight? His heart cleaves in two and falls to his shoes and Sirius smiles slightly to himself, looking out over the corridor. Remus wonders if the fogginess in Sirius’ grey eyes is an illusion or not. He wishes vacantly that he was back in his Muggle flat because of how much it hurts to be at Hogwarts next to Sirius.

“I missed the feel of it all, it still—it still feels like home. Beauxbatons was wonderful, Alphard taught me… I don’t know, taught me everything, saved me from going down a path, helped me piece things back together with Reg.” Sirius clasps his hands behind his back as they walk and it strikes Remus as something the Sirius he knew would’ve _hated_. “If we hadn’t worked through things together, I don’t know if we would be where we are now with the Horcruxes.”

Remus follows Sirius down the corridor, staring at the back of his head in disbelief. With a deep breath that shudders through his chest, Remus summons words he’s had behind his teeth for years. “So why the hell did you keep talking to Regulus, and ignored us? Ignored _James_ , he was your _best friend_ , wasn’t he? He sent you so many letters. What about _me_ , Sirius, Godric, I thought we had something? I would’ve—” Remus pauses by the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy, his voice shuddering in his throat, as he stares resolutely at the opposite wall, refusing to look at Sirius now— “I would’ve waited for you.”

Sirius turns to him in slow motion, his hair sliding in a wave over his shoulder. His cheekbones catch the late afternoon light as it slides over his profile and Remus’ heart clenches with how bloody _present tense_ his love for Sirius Black is.

“I haven’t missed Hogwarts. Because, dammit, Sirius, all I could think of for the rest of it all was how much you weren’t here, and how you just walked the hell out, Sirius. You just walked out and left.”

* * *

September 1977

Remus boarded the Hogwarts Express for the final time with an utter lack of pomp and circumstance. After helping a handful of what had to be first-years onto the train, directing them into compartments and making sure they were settled, he found Peter, James and Lily in an empty compartment a few doors down from where the Prefects meeting would be taking place.

Last year he, James and Peter had stood at the door to their old compartment, unable to step through the door. Remus knew Pete and James, just as he did, saw Sirius lounging in the seat by the window, his feet on the opposite cushion, smiling at them and saying _ready for another year of mayhem, men?_ After a heavy breath on the threshold, James had turned and said _we’ll find another compartment_.

So this year, his final year, a year Remus always imagined he would be ecstatic for, they were in any old compartment, standing around like adults at a reunion none of them wanted to attend. Lily embraced him tightly, her hand sliding over the back of his neck in her particular brand of sisterly affection, about to open her mouth to ask how he was, until Remus smiled and nodded softly.

James shook his hand, clasping Remus’ scarred hand between both of his broad ones, and Remus thought of how he and Sirius had always been embracing, always hugging, tussling, arms around each other. Remus was well aware he and Peter were such wildly poor substitutes for the whirlwind that was Sirius Black. Remus knew James missed his almost-brother the same way Remus missed the warmth of Sirius in his bed, the acceptance of Sirius’ arm around his waist, the taste of Sirius’ mouth.

The only thing worse than missing Sirius was the look of pity he occasionally caught from the others. James still missed Sirius, yes, but that spring, right before OWLs, Lily had one day looked over and said _Hey Potter, want to go to Hogsmeade?_ and he seemed to smile a little more. Remus looked away whenever they were entwined on the sofa, unable to see anything but he and Sirius on the same sofa a year earlier, ensnared together when they should’ve been studying or learning or doing Prefect rounds but Remus couldn’t draw himself away from Sirius’ mouth.

He didn’t miss the looks the others gave him. His singular seat in the library, his occupation of the armchair just a little way from the rest of the group, the way Remus would, very occasionally, after a long day, go to lean his head on a phantom shoulder he had assumed would _always_ be there, half-asleep, and jerk awake and hate every breath of it. Lily would pat his arm or McKinnon would offer him a cushion or James would give him this sad little look of _I’m fucking sorry, mate,_ but it all still hurt.

In the compartment, they made idle conversation until Lily and James led the way to the Prefects meeting and Peter went off to find Mary MacDonald or Frank Longbottom or some other person he probably spoke to more than either James or Remus now.

The meeting passed in a blur. James and Lily made a wonderful couple, Remus thought from his position at the back of the room, arms crossed, watching them with a knife in his chest. He should be happy for them both, Remus knew, but he looked at them and he saw what he and Sirius could’ve had.

“Hey Moony,” James said, clapping Remus on the shoulder. The room was empty save for the three of them now and Remus let himself sink into the touch of his friend. “How are you, really?”

Remus rubbed a hand over his eyes. “Shit, Prongs… I just… I don’t know… I can’t concentrate. I wonder if I should’ve come back at all this year.”

“You deserve to be here, Remus,” said Lily, her green eyes blazing. She, thankfully, didn’t fold her arm into James’ when it was just the three of them, as if she could sense the pain radiating in Remus’ chest at their displays of quiet and loving affection. “Don’t let Sirius ruin Hogwarts for you.”

It was easier to let them think he hated Sirius for the ‘prank’, it was easier for them to construe _that_ as betrayal rather than the way Sirius walked out of the Gryffindor dorms without a backwards glance. That was what Remus woke up to in relief behind his eyelids, not the knowledge of the prank, or the vague, treacle-blurred memory of Snape at the door of the Shack, or Sirius’ face begging for forgiveness without knowing it was already there in abundance between them. No, he woke to Sirius walking out of the dorm room. He woke to Sirius in his ear saying _doesn’t work like that, Moons_.

“Yeah, I guess.” Remus rubbed a hand over the back of his neck, glancing between Lily and James. Merlin, look at them, they were so fucking _good_. Just the best people he had ever met and they would only get better and better the more they grew.

“I, uh, I sent him a few more letters over the summer,” James said, both hands scrubbing through his mass of uncontrollable hair. Lily smiled softly and drew one of his hands into hers to stop him pulling lightly at the crown of his head—a habit he had developed recently.

“Oh?” Hope—the foolish creature—bloomed in Remus’ chest.

It was dashed as soon as James shook his head. “No, nothing at all. I figure… I figure the letters must be getting lost or something. I don’t know any other reason he just wouldn’t talk to us. We were best friends, weren’t we? All of us. You know- after everything we did.”

Remus nodded, painfully aware of the tears in his eyes, and then he and James were hugging, arms wound tight around each other, faces pressed into each others shoulders. Lily patted Remus tidily on the shoulder before she presumably ducked out of the compartment, leaving the two boys still embracing.

* * *

July 1982

Sirius turns away without saying anything and Remus watches him pace three times along the corridor. The door to the Room of Requirement slides into existence, materialising through a haze Remus thinks might be tears in his eyes until it isn’t.

Remus watches Sirius stride through the door, and only once he’s stepped through does Remus follow, hands in his pockets. The Room of Hidden Things is as awe-inspiring as it was years ago, piled high with things, like a maze or a warren or trying to follow of a tendril of cohesive thought after a few too many Firewhiskys.

 _He isn’t going to respond, is he?_ Remus thinks as he follows Sirius into the avenues between piled things. Every corner he sees himself, laughing, joking, arm around Sirius’ waist, mouth fitted into the angle of Sirius’ shoulder because he was _just_ the right height and could never resist that glorious expanse of alabaster skin. The silence thickens between them, only amplified when Remus knocks into a pile of books and sends them sprawling across the floor. Sirius jumps and his wand is in his hand and he stares at the pile like he’s seeing a ghost or a Dementor. Remus swears and leans against an old wardrobe to catch his breath.

This man might be a stranger, but their shared memories are etched in here so clearly that Remus can see just what Sirius is remembering. _His hands grasping for purchase in that boneless, swimming state of post-orgasm, tumbling into a stack of books and sending both he and Sirius careening onto the ground. Sirius laughing into his mouth and guiding Remus’ hand beneath the waistband of his trousers._ They had been so carefree, so wonderful, so damn in love.

Remus turns away from the spot, barely comprehending how his memory can keep such a space so pristine when he can’t remember his mother’s greenhouse anymore.

“I lied.” Sirius’ voice is shaky, wicking out of his throat into the air between them. Remus goes still. Which bit? All of it? Remus presses his forehead into the wood of the wardrobe and closes his eyes.

“I wasn’t expelled.” Sirius holds up a hand as Remus turns to him and opens his mouth. He doesn’t know whether he wants to cry or scream or shout or fling a curse, so he’s sort of glad Sirius cuts him off. “Let me talk.” Sirius always had the upper hand, does so even now, with this vaguely pained look on his face, cheeks drawn of all colour, he still looks so fucking _above_ it all. “I told my parents I’d finally agree to go to Beauxbatons, and I asked Dumbledore to act as though he had expelled me.”

Remus must’ve shook his head, or taken a step forward, or something else entirely beyond the boundaries of his mind now, because Sirius’ face changes, his eyebrows leaping up towards his hairline. Remus would’ve thought he—at last—looks vulnerable, but all Remus’ brain is capable of is _why, why, why?_ Maybe one of those why’s comes out of Remus’ mouth on an exhale, slipping past the vice grip his emotions seem to have on his throat.

“I did it because—” Sirius runs a hand through his hair and straightens the cuff of his jacket. He’s standing straight, not leaning on anything or reclining or looking anything other than _present_ and it’s jarring— “Because I felt like I’d betrayed you all.”

“What?” Remus thinks it should’ve come out a little lighter than that, almost joking, perhaps carried on the wave of a laugh, but the word comes out a little more watery.

“Because I felt like I’d betrayed _you,_ Moony.”

Remus opens and closes his mouth a few times but nothing comes.

Sirius is looking at a point over his shoulder, spinning his wand between his fingers but Remus barely notices because his eyes are glued to Sirius’ face. “You trusted me with all your secrets. With—with your whole damn life it felt like sometimes. And I threw it back at you because I was angry and foolish and stupid and told Snape. And I thought—” To Remus’ horror, Sirius tips his head back towards the ceiling and blinks rapidly. When he speaks again his voice is tinny and tight and shudders at the back of his throat— “ _If I can betray the person I care for more than anything I’ve ever known in my whole life, then maybe my parents are right. I am a Black. I’ve bad blood_.” Sirius takes a rasping breath and clenches his fingers white around his wand. “I didn’t want to think of what I was capable of. So I ran away. I ran the fuck away.”

Remus blinks rapidly, his brain whirring and spinning and turning in and around on itself. All of his weight is leaning on this old wardrobe and his body feels like it’s shuttering or on the edge of a transformation or imploding entirely because his heart is pounding and pounding and pounding and Sirius Orion Black is fucking _crying_. Remus thinks he would’ve never seen that sight and even if he did he would be _glad_ for it because then Sirius would be hurting like he hurts but instead it feels like he’s being cleaved in two.

“And it was _stupid_. I should’ve fought. Stayed. Grown some fucking balls. Just _apologised_ to you, Moony, because we had something…” Sirius turns on the heel of his expensive boot, steps a pace or two away then turns back. “And James—he had to go down to the Shack and make a decision to save a boy he hated from his _best friend_ whilst the other best friend realises just how much they’ve fucked up and I—” Sirius breaks off and paces his two steps away and two steps towards Remus again. “How could I do that to you both? That’s not what best friends do.”

“You—” Remus shakes his head. “Merlin, Sirius, you—you left—”

“By the time I realised I should’ve stayed, once Alphard had knocked some fucking sense into me, I was graduating Beauxbatons and ignoring you both for nearly two years because I thought you were better off without me. I was too fucking proud to come back and say _Moony, I fucked up_ , and I’m still too fucking proud but I’m saying it.”

Remus looks around, as if grasping for straws to try and find something to kick-start his brain back in to action. The diadem leaps out at him, his brain supplying the memory of Sirius, 15-year old Sirius, trying to place it on his head, but he’s still blinking and trying to figure out what the hell to say to this 22-year old Sirius.

“But everything is different now. And I thought I could just come back and pretend nothing has happened. Regulus and I could deal with the Horcruxes. I could let you have your life and I could have mine but- but, I don’t think I have one.”

“Sirius, I—” Remus grips onto the side of the dresser, his head pounding. The diadem is glinting across the avenue and he knows they should be keeping to business and getting things done but Sirius is staring at him and his knees might give out. “But—but you leaving was a bigger betrayal than Snape… you leaving hurt more than that greasy little git knowing my biggest secret did…”

“I know, I know that now. And it’s too late, isn’t it?”

Remus feels like he’s wading through fog or treacle or some strange liminal space he doesn’t understand, and it’s as if the world is slowly spinning and turning on its axis and he’ll be spat out in another universe. He wants to admit he still loves Sirius and let himself fall into those arms and press his cheek against the lapel of his jacket and savour the feeling of Sirius’ fingers in his hair, but six years of walls and telling himself he hates Sirius _fucking_ Black make it all lodge in his throat. “I… I don’t know what to say, Sirius. I—Merlin, I thought you hated me, hated us all.”

“I know.” Sirius looks miserable, his hair framing his pale face and swirling over his broad shoulders. Remus isn’t sure if the wetness under his eyes is from tears or the strange flickering lights of the room around them.

“Can we just—I don’t know. Let’s just find the diadem, get the hell out of this room and then we can… then we can talk or something? I need to sit down.” When Sirius nods, already starting down another pathway, Remus crosses over and snatches the diadem up. “Here, it’s here.”

“That’s… anti-climatic, isn’t it?” Sirius muses, a note of incredible, heart-wrenching emptiness in his voice, before turning on his heel and starting towards the exit.

Remus scoffs and deposits the diadem into his bag. It is, isn’t it?

* * *

September 1981

_Remus,_

_We’re going under the Fidelius tonight. Obviously I can’t tell you any more than that. I wish I could, but just know that I think we’re all going to be fine. I trust our Secret Keeper with our lives, with Lily’s and Harry’s. I think she’s the only reason I got through school after what happened and if I could put us all under the Fidelius so we could wait it out together, then I would. Me, Lily, Harry, you and Peter, all safe away from this fucking war._

_I’ve written Sirius one last letter. I think I’m a bit daft, to be sending another one when none of the others have gotten a response. But I can’t help it. I’d like to think the boy I knew as a kid is still there somewhere? I’ve told him that I wish it hadn’t happened how it had and I wish there was some way I could’ve saved him from it all._

_Moony. If this all goes wrong_ —James’ handwriting went spidery here and Remus found his throat tightening— _then please know that you were my best friend. We were all best friends and you were the best friends a guy could’ve asked for. You, Wormy, Padfoot. I would’ve done absolutely anything for any of you. And I’m so sorry we grew apart. Lily says things with Sirius affected me more than I realised, and I should go to a Mind Healer after we get out of this alive. And so I’m sorry. I’m sorry I sort of just let it happen. I should’ve held onto you tighter. I tried to keep us all together, Moony, I really did._ _If it all goes wrong, just remember that. That, and I’ll be upset if we all die without you meeting Harry._

_If we get out of this, you won’t be able to get rid of me for making up for lost time._

_I’m a little drunk, I’m nervous, I’m_ _scared_ _, Moony, because I don’t want to lose what I’ve only just found. So I’m rambling, but I need you to know that you were my best friend._

_All our love, until the end_

_James, Lily and Harry_

Remus hadn’t cried for nearly a year, but he cried now, at his kitchen table, the tears streaking down his face and landing in constellations over James’ letter. With a weary slug of his Firewhisky, tears still tracking down his face, chest heaving but in that strange detached way when even crying doesn’t hurt as it should, Remus stood and crossed over the room to the small writing desk. The top drawer barely opened, but when Remus prised the drawer along its runners, it sprung apart, filled to the brim with letters. Most were from James, appeals for him to come and visit, updates on his lack of contact from Sirius.

Remus had written back faithfully to every single one, knowing how much silence pained James, but plied his own excuses for not wanting to visit. He and James _were_ close. Close in their group with Sirius and Peter, but then, after it all, the glue seemed to cure, it seemed to go off and become brittle and they could just all break away without anything keeping them together. Remus knew he was in his head too much. Sirius had always drawn him out of it, but now he wasn’t there. Remus just had to watch the slow drift of his friends and be unable to do anything to stop it. But now, after this one, he had nowhere left to write back to, nowhere to send his letters because even if he did know where James and Lily were right now, the address would slide out of his memory on the wings of a charm tonight.

With the wistful melancholy that came with drinking, Remus sat himself at the desk and pulled out a handful of yellow parchment he had shoved into the drawer in an equally melancholy wistfulness two years earlier. Most of them were half-written, abandoned when Remus sobered up or when he realised he just couldn’t put into words what he wanted to say.

_Sirius,_

_It’s our last year at Hogwarts._ _I wish you’d reply._ __

_Sirius,_

_My flat is in Muggle London, not Wizarding. I’m not going to go to Oxford. There’s no motorbike rides or picnics on the grass. We’re in a war and everyone is dying and where the fuck are you?_

_Black,_

_I don’t care if you never reply to me. But James deserves a reply. He and Lily are married now, expecting a baby. You would’ve been best man, you know. You selfish bastard._

Remus could practically see his emotional state spelled out on the parchment of the last letter. He was clearly drunk, desperately hating Sirius for all the turmoil he had upended on their wonderful little friend group. He still hated him now, tracing the indents of those letters. James had tried to keep them all together, but none of it seemed to work. There was just something missing now, something driving a wedge between them the same way it drove into Remus’ heart. He knew he himself could’ve tried harder to keep them together too. He knew he had pulled away, unable to see the so obviously Sirius-shaped hole in their friend group, unable to watch James and see only James-and-Sirius, Padfoot-and-Prongs, unable to be in the face of James’ cheery smile, unable to lean on him now without Sirius there too.

Finishing his whisky in one gulp, Remus sat heavily in the rickety old chair and pulled out a blank piece of parchment. He hovered over the corner with his quill, debating the name he addressed it to, before he heaved a breath.

 _Prongs_ ,

_We were all best friends, weren’t we? I’m sorry I didn’t do my part to try and make Sirius stay. I never thought he would leave without a fight. I should’ve tried harder. I should’ve tried harder with it all. But I didn’t._

_If we get out of this, I’ll come for dinner every Sunday._

_All my love,_

_Moony_

Oh, how he wished the optimism flowing through his quill was reflected in his mind.

* * *

July 1982

Remus only realises where they’re going when they’re at the end of the hall, Sirius a half-pace ahead of him. It’s the closest they’ve walked all day and the closeness shouldn’t racket through Remus with a heady mix of pain and desire but it does.

At the Fat Lady, Sirius mutters the password Dumbledore had given them, just in case they had needed access to any of the common rooms or dormitories in their search for the Horcrux. As the portrait swings open, Sirius falters and motions for Remus to go first. “This is your common room, not mine.”

Remus smiles—Merlin, has he smiled like this in the last three years?—and shakes his head. “You’re a Gryffindor through and through, Sirius.” Ignoring the tremors in his fingers, Remus holds his hand out between them, palm up, feeling like an offering and a declaration all at once.

Sirius, a smile peeking at the corners of his lips, lifts his hand and links their fingers. They slot together like there hasn’t been six years and inordinate amounts of pain between them. Together, they step over the threshold and the Gryffindor common room is just how Remus remembers it.

The sofa is still in front of the fire, where he and Sirius used to lay entwined late into the night, and in seventh year, Remus watched Lily and James there, curled up as one being and feeling acid in his veins. He’s not sure what hurts more remembering. He sees the window seat where he and Sirius would sit in that winter of 1975, smoking a joint out of the window and risking getting caught by Kingsley Shacklebolt because _Godric, Moony I’m not freezing my balls off out there to get high, I’m too fond of them. And you like them too, don’t you?_

“It hasn’t changed at all,” says Sirius, sounding awestruck. He’s still holding on to Remus’ hand and Remus can feel his pulse hammering against their wrists pressed together. “I’m sorry, Remus.”

Remus pauses, staring at the empty grate of the fire and wondering if his brain has just given out because he doesn’t think Sirius has _ever_ said he’s sorry in such explicit terms.

Sirius continues, still holding Remus’ hand as he trails absently around the room. “I ran away because I didn’t want to hurt you. You know- you knew what I was like. I was brash and stupid and never thought twice about anything and I thought that if I could’ve hurt you like that, with Snape, then I would’ve hurt you a million times more if we’d carried on.”

“Sirius, you—”

“I did it to protect you. We were fifteen, you know… Merlin, we were kids, and I thought you’d get over this and I’d get over this and you’d be better without me there to hurt you even more.”

Remus doesn’t realise he’s leading them up to the dorms until his foot is on the first step. Sirius is still holding his hand. The day’s revelations are simmering around under his skin like the wolf but with pain and hurt and this odd sense of floating, weightless hope that Remus barely recognises.

“But I didn’t get over this, Sirius. Everything still hurts _because_ you left. And—” Remus ventures out on a limb as he leads them up the stairs to their old dormitory. It’s strange to have Sirius over his shoulder and to not be following him for once, but with Remus a step ahead they’re almost level heights and Sirius’ hand is still pressed against his— “I don’t think you did either, did you?”

Sirius huffs a humourless laugh as they reach the small landing and Remus eases open the door. “No, Merlin, Remus, no. No, I didn’t get over it, I—fuck I was hoping I would eventually, and I built these damn walls and when your letters trailed off I thought _he’s stopped now, he’s moved on, he deserves better_ , and I wished I fucking didn’t.”

Sirius’ breath is on the back of Remus’ neck as they stand in the doorway and Remus shivers. He sees them in the dormitory, sprawled onto Sirius’ bed together, tangled in the sheets in the one free period a week they shared, all sweat-sheened skin and the exuberance and energy of youth and he can practically _hear_ their moans. He sees them cuddled together on Remus’ bed, both studying, books on their laps but their legs entwined and his head on Sirius’ shoulder, Sirius’ arm around his shoulder as he turns the pages of his Transfiguration book with a wandless flick of his fingers.

“Fuck, it’s just the same, isn’t it…” Sirius’ voice breaks a little as they step into the room. He goes straight to his old bed, the one that stayed painfully empty once he was gone, and sits on the edge. Remus tries not to think about how strangely empty his hand feels now and watches Sirius. He looks like an old photograph. Remus would’ve thought him another of his memories, but he’s so resonantly here, his pristine button-down, his expensive boots, the wave of his hair. Instead, Remus remembers he, James and Peter trying to transfigure the bed away or change it into something else but it stayed resolutely as a bed, and the sheets stayed resolutely fur-covered.

“I wonder…” Sirius breathes, pitching to the side and reaching up to touch a portion of the headboard near where it joins to the post. Remus feels Sirius’ magic flare, the forest, hot and wild, and his own magic responds. Remus crosses to sit next to him because his magic pulls him there like a rope and his thigh feels hot pressed against Sirius’ as they sit hip to hip. “It’s still here Moony, Merlin.” The graffiti shimmers for a moment under the concealment charm.

Remus doesn’t have to lean closer to see what it says, he remembers peering at it whilst Sirius, tongue between his teeth, burned the words there for posterity. He remembers his hand on Sirius’ bare waist, his hair falling in tendrils between them. He remembers shivering under Sirius’ magic and mapping the line of his shoulder under his mouth and leaning in for a kiss once he was done. He remembers leaning up to touch it in the throes of sex, grasping onto the headboard for stability and feeling the magic burst under his fingers with Sirius above him.

 _Padfoot & Moony 1975_ sits inside a circle, surrounded by stars. _The stars and the moon,_ Sirius had told him before he kissed him hard and Remus had melted into him. _Godric, I love you_ , Remus had thought, the taste of it on his tongue, nearly said out loud. _I love you more than anything_.

“I’m sorry, Moony, for all the pain,” Sirius croaks, one hand twisting in the sheets as he sits back up, the other searching blindly for Remus’ hand.

“I wish I’d said it sooner,” Remus whispers, staring at the graffiti, remembering how often he had thought just how much he loved Sirius, and how he never quite found the time to say it out loud. “I wish I’d told you you were my world more often.”

* * *

March 1976

Remus tumbled up the stairs to the Gryffindor dormitories, his arms clamped around Sirius’ waist. “It’s my birthday,” he said into Sirius’ shoulder, his cheek pressed there.

Sirius laughed and manoeuvred him through the doorway, shutting the door behind them with a louder-than-necessary bang. The world spun for a moment, the Muggle beers and Firewhisky catching up with Remus to make the colours of everything shift and spin. Sirius’ mouth found the corner of his jaw, his tongue swirling sinful and hot over tender flesh. Sirius urged him backwards towards his bed, elegant fingers on the buttons of his shirt.

Remus stretched up to loop his arms around Sirius’ neck, dropping his chin back to bare his throat. “It’s my birthday,” he repeated, gasping softly as Sirius pulled his shirt from his shoulders and pressed their bodies together. His fingers felt vaguely out of his control as they twisted through Sirius’ hair and pulled soft little moans from his mouth that Remus chased like breadcrumbs.

Sirius eased them on to the bed and knelt up to pull his own shirt off in one swift motion. Remus watched from the bed, sprawled under Sirius and swimming with the pleasant current of drunkenness. Sirius looked like an angel, all backlit, all beautiful. _I love you,_ Remus thought.

“What do you want for a present, darling?” Sirius all-but cooed. Remus thought he should be vaguely offended by the nickname, but then Sirius was kissing a path down his neck and nudging his knees apart to press their bodies together.

“I have you,” Remus gasped in response, body lifting from the mattress to cant up against Sirius’ as the other boy stroked a hand down his chest.

“You do,” Sirius agreed, leaning down to kiss him soundly.

They stripped their clothes quickly, fumbling and eager in drunkenness, Sirius’ teeth on Remus’ neck, Remus’ nails on Sirius’ shoulders, to the soundtrack of moans and gasps. Remus thought he’d never be as comfortable with his body as he was with Sirius. Sirius made him feel wanted, adored, revered, and it was a sensation Remus was forever hungry for, this beautiful creature wanting him, endlessly insatiable.

Remus ended up on his knees a short while later, arms pillowed under his head, teeth sunk into his bottom lip as Sirius nudged into him, hands on his hips, body hot against the back of Remus’ thighs. Remus was all fire, all tightly bundled nerve endings and distant awareness of Sirius’ mouth on his spine. Sirius moaned above him, their hips smacking together, flesh on flesh. Remus’ head swam with sensation, leaning back into Sirius’ for every thrust.

With a ragged breath, Sirius shifted forward, grabbing Remus’ hand in his own. He stretched them forward, bringing their joined fingers over the graffiti he had etched there only weeks previously. Magic flared, their joined magic, forest and firewood, tendrils around them as the graffiti shimmered. Remus came with Sirius’ face in his neck, their fingers pressed against the graffiti, Sirius inside him, above him, around him, all of him. _I love you_ , he thought on the wings of his orgasm, gasping and writhing. _I love you._

* * *

July 1982

“Say it now then,” Sirius breathes, his eyes wide as dinner plates, his finger still laced with Remus’ and Remus can’t tell if it’s himself shaking or Sirius.

“I—” Remus swallows around the word and squeezes their fingers tight. He stares distantly up at the burgundy drapes, thinking it might be easier, but then he feels bereft without Sirius’ eyes. He’s gone six years without Sirius’ eyes and he never wants to be without them again. “I love you. I loved you then, and I love you now and I’ve loved you for six fucking years and tried to wish with everything that I didn’t but I love you.”

Sirius makes a noise like all the breath has been knocked out of his body and his shoulders shudder like he’s been hit and his eyes flutter. “Fuck.” He falls back onto the bed with another huff and Remus shifts next to him because they feel so damn entwined.

Sirius’ eyes are foggy and swirl like mercury. “I thought about you every damn day. Merlin, I’m so stupid. I’d lay in bed at Beauxbatons and think about you. How much I missed you, how much I missed kisses in the morning when we were half-awake. You’d smile whenever we heard Prongs snoring through the drapes and we’d pretend we were asleep a little longer and just keep kissing like we had the world.”

Remus grasps for Sirius’ hand again and shivers when Sirius brings it up to his mouth and presses kisses over Remus’ scarred knuckles. “I missed that too. The memories were _everywhere_ , Padfoot.”

Sirius pitches forward, leaning up onto one elbow to press their lips together. Remus is sure the noise he makes in response is something like a whine, but he doesn’t dwell on it because he is _kissing_ Sirius after all this time. Sirius’ mouth tastes the same, somehow, although it doesn’t taste of Fizzing Whizzbee’s or the same cigarettes, but it still tastes of Sirius. Remus’ hands find his shoulders, palming over the planes of him as Sirius licks into his mouth and coils their tongues together. Remus’ head spins with it and Sirius’ hands feel like they’re everywhere all at once to try and catalogue every shift in Remus’ details, new scars, new shapes, every new part of him.

“The moons, Remus,” says Sirius as he leans back, breaking the kiss on a gasp as if he’s just realised something. His words slide against Remus’ skin as his silver eyes find Remus’ face. “I left you for the moons. I’m so sorry.”

“Just don’t leave me alone for another one,” Remus ushers out on a breath, damn-near a whimper because Sirius has one hand in his hair and the other on his waist and he hurts but it’s beautiful.

“I won’t, I won’t.” Sirius shakes his head and his hair falls around them like a curtain. He takes Remus’ face in his hands, thumbs over the top of his cheekbones, long, elegant fingers curling over his jaw, and tilts Remus’ head up to look at him. “I love you. I love you. I love you.”

Remus slides his hands under Sirius’ shirt to palm over his back, to map out those muscles and remember every curve of him that’s different but somehow the same. Sirius’ words do more than his kisses, and that says something because Remus is _drunk_ on his kisses. Sirius kisses like it’s all he’s ever wanted, commanding and earth-shattering and Remus’ whole entire world comes alive for it.

Sirius urges him back onto the bed, nudging his knees apart to situate himself between them. Remus feels pliant, like warm honey or hot chocolate or something that writhes and undulates with every kiss. His hands skitter over Sirius’ torso, down over his arse and the cords of his thighs. Sirius kneels up to pull off his jacket and shirt and Remus’ breath catches in his throat at Sirius above him. His hands fall uselessly by his sides for a moment at the sight and the whine that comes out of his throat is almost desperate.

“Merlin, Moony, you’re _so_ beautiful,” Sirius says, his shirt discarded, his jeans cut to his waist, his fingers brushing over the high points of Remus’ face. It feels holy, the touch of his fingers, and Remus shivers as Sirius unbuttons his shirt.

“I love you,” Remus echoes, coming alive under Sirius’ hands as they push his shirt away and start on his belt buckle. Remus lifts his hips and lets Sirius push his jeans down until they both realise they’re still wearing shoes and neither of them want to move to take them off. “Just spell them, spell them,” Remus urges, his arms looping around Sirius’ neck.

One of Sirius’ hands withdraws to grasp his wand and he whispers a spell that doesn’t quite reach Remus’ ears because Sirius is naked between his legs now. “Godric, Padfoot,” is all he manages in response. Sirius’ magic is wild and calls up the wilderness in Remus until he’s clutching at Sirius’ shoulders and urging him closer with his heel in the small of Sirius’ back, frantic, nails in his shoulder blades, teeth against his collarbone.

Another rush of magic— _Merlin_ , Remus thinks he might come before Sirius is even inside him—for that wandless lubrication spell and Sirius eases a finger into him. Remus keens and swears and lifts his hips, shaky and desperate.

“Fuck, _Sirius_ , ohh—” He wonders if he should rather savour this, after so long, trying to commit this to memory, but instead he just wants and wants and _wants_. He wants Sirius inside him, he wants Sirius moaning into his mouth. He wants to come around Sirius’ cock. He wants the world to be right again.

Sirius exhales heavily as he pushes into Remus with short, shallow thrusts. Remus kisses him hard, urging him closer, deeper, more, more, more, their tongues meeting outside of their mouths, breathing over them in short puffs.

“ _Oh_ , Moony, _fuck_ , you feel so good. _Merlin,_ I’m gonna come.” Sirius goes very still as he bottoms out, his eyes shut, trying to weather the torrent of pleasure.

Remus stills too, his hand coming down between them to stroke over his own cock because he won’t last long either with Sirius inside him and his body has wanted this for such a long time. Sirius knocks his hand aside, his eyes now open and focused on Remus with such a possessive ferocity that even if he didn’t touch him Remus would feel his gaze like it was fingers. But Sirius wraps his fingers around Remus’ cock, moving over him in the same rhythm as his thrusts, deep, long thrusts like he’s trying to mesh their bodies together.

“ _Ah_ , Sirius, _Pad—Padfoot,_ I’m—” Remus forces his eyes to stay open, staring up at Sirius’ silver ones, as he comes in hot rivulets over Sirius’ hand and his stomach and the part of his thigh that’s up over Sirius’ shoulder. Remus’ body shudders and clenches, feels like it’s trying to draw Sirius deeper so they can never part. His whole being seems to cleave apart, split between before and after, between Sirius-then and Sirius-now and the part of him that feels somehow whole again.

Sirius moans something filthy and expletive as his head drops forward and he comes with a shuddering breath and his breath spreads over Remus’ cheek and his kiss goes lax and languid. Remus can still remember the way Sirius’ thigh and arse muscles would tighten as he drove himself deep into Remus, his jaw falling slack against the snapping rush of fire. Remus would think of that, shamefully, when he was by himself and feeling so alone at Hogwarts, behind his drapes, hand in his pyjama bottoms and wishing it was Sirius with every breath. _It hasn’t changed,_ Remus thinks, one hand going down to grip Sirius’ arse cheek to feel the flex there as warmth suffuses through his insides and his mind slowly returns to him. But it has, that one gesture is the same, but everything else is somehow different but familiar, like something deeper than his mind recognises this.

“I love you,” Remus says, his tongue thick with lingering pleasure as Sirius sinks on top of him and gently eases Remus’ calf from his shoulder.

“You have to say it now, every time you think it you have to say it,” Sirius murmurs, pressing kisses along Remus’ cheek, his brow, the bridge of his nose, his mouth.

Remus smiles and it feels like it finally sinks into his bones. “I’ll be saying it a lot.”

“Good.”

* * *

August 1984

Moony huffs happily as he barrels into Padfoot and sends them both careening into Prongs, settled with his legs tucked beneath him, head tilted up, Wormtail perched on his antlers. Padfoot yips and barks excitedly, scrambling back up and taking off into the forest at full tilt, dirt kicking up behind him. Moony barks before licking a stripe over Prongs’ snout and snuffling at Wormtail’s whiskers. Padfoot barks from within the trees and Moony answers again, a last appraising glance at the rest of his pack before he runs after Padfoot’s tracks, sniffing out the black dog.

They are back. The dog and the stag and the rat are back and Moony is not alone anymore. They are running in the forest together and it smells of his pack and they are happy and Moony is not alone anymore. He catches up to Padfoot easily; long, loping strides to leap over fallen trees, following the scent of the dog in the air to find him in a small clearing. Padfoot play-bows, tongue hanging from the side of his mouth and dances around Moony. Moony huffs and licks at Padfoot’s mouth, his nose, his ear, nudging the dog onto his back.

Then Moony leaps off into the forest, barking happily, letting Padfoot chase him now. They take it in turns now because that is what pack-mates do. They chase each other, Prongs occasionally joining in to trot through the forest beside them, until they fall into a sleepy pile some time just before dawn. Moony snuffles into Padfoot’s thick, black fur and leans into the sturdy weight of Prongs and lets Wormtail fall asleep between his ears.

Remus wakes to the smell of the forest.

He’s in a bed, clean sheets against his bare limbs, and Sirius’ magic is all over him. Sirius’ feet are pressed to his calves and the magic lingers as he sets his wand down and settles with his chest against Remus’ back. “Morning, Moons.”

Remus rumbles some kind of response in the back of his throat. Sirius chases the noise with his mouth and presses endless kisses over Remus’ flesh. He feels alive and whole and wonderful. It has been such a long time since Moony has turned his lunar frustrations on his body and Remus has woken up to cuts and scratches and pain. Instead, he wakes to a gentle cleaning charm shucking off the mud in his skin and Sirius’ beautiful mouth and beautiful magic and beautiful presence.

“Morning Pads.” Remus eases himself onto his back as Sirius trails his lips over the ball of Remus’ shoulder joint and his hands skim over Remus’ skin.

“You hurt anywhere, darling?” Sirius whispers into Remus’ bicep, laving his tongue over a scar there. Remus loops his arms around Sirius’ shoulders and lets his body melt back into the mattress at Sirius pressing close.

“No.” Remus presses his face into Sirius’ hair and breathes in. Cigarettes, sweets, the forest, wild, brash, hot. Remus’ magic feels so entwined with Sirius’ that he wonders how he was ever able to carry himself without it wrapping around him and bolstering his own brand of lightning strikes and firewood and the soil after it rains. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

They stay like that, entwined, mouths mapping constellations, Sirius bringing Remus back to humanity, showing him limbs and skin and love and affection until the smell of breakfast wafts up the stairs and Remus’ stomach rumbles.

“Come on, Moons,” Sirius says, helping Remus to stand after he’s pulled on his own clothes.

Together, they traipse down the stairs and find James, Lily, Harry and Peter in the kitchen. James is at the stove frying bacon whilst Lily whisks eggs and pours them in a sizzling pan. Remus watches them move around each other with the ease that comes with nearly ten years together. He grips Sirius’ waist and thinks of the time they have lost, but it’s only to then think of all the time they have in front of them. Remus tries not to think of those years in the war, when Voldemort was after the Potters, before they destroyed all the Horcruxes and Dumbledore sent the Death Eaters to a master-less demise in Azkaban. It’s easier to forget them with Sirius’ arm around his waist and the lingering happiness of the full moon night with his friends.

“Morning you two!” Peter exclaims, sipping his coffee. He’s grinning, one hand around his mug and the other within Harry’s sticky grasp.

“Padfoot! Moony!” Harry looks up from where he’s been colouring with one hand, the other holding onto Peter’s hand. “Mum says I can’t have chocolate for breakfast! But you let me when I stay with you so can I? Can I pleeeeease?”

Remus catches the glare Lily flings across the kitchen in Sirius’ direction as he eases himself into a chair at the table and nods a hello to Peter and James.

Sirius crosses the room, scoops Harry out of his chair and presses a kiss to his forehead. “No can do, Prongslet! Don’t know where you get that idea, we have healthy breakfasts at our house don’t we?” He grins over his shoulder at Lily and blows her an apologetic kiss, shifting Harry up onto his hip.

“Put me down Padfoot!” Harry wriggles and frowns in a way that makes Remus swallow laughter and think irrevocably of James when he doesn’t get his own way. “We _do_ have chocolate for breakfast at your house, all the time! And when Moony isn’t here we have the chocolate from the tall cupboard next to the oven and you tell me not to tell him!”

Sirius shrugs, widening his eyes at Remus as if to say _I don’t know what he’s talking about, Moony_.

Harry only sees this as a sign to continue. “Padfoot! It’s the cupboard even _you_ have to use the stool to reach! And the chocolate has a red wrapper with a H for Harry on it, that’s what you said! I wanted the blue one but you said the H is for Harry! Like my jumper! I’ll go get it, so you can see and remember. Silly Padfoot!”

Sirius blinks like he’s Prongs caught in headlights and lets Harry wiggle from his grasp and run off into the living room, heedless of the chaos he’s released.

James turns from the stove, trying, and failing, to hide laughter in the collar of his shirt. “What’s in the blue one?”

Remus smiles wryly and folds his arms on the table, trying to hold back laughter. “It’s rum and raisin.”

“That’s vaguely sensible at least,” Peter muses as he sets the cutlery out for breakfast and brushes aside Harry’s abandoned colouring for later. Remus bites back another laugh, though, because Lily doesn’t try to play it cool and instead smacks Sirius on the forehead with a spatula.

“Chocolate for breakfast, Sirius?!”

Remus sits back in his chair, stretching one leg then the other out in front of him. Sirius leaps back from Lily’s angry kitchen utensils and transforms into Padfoot, the great shaggy dog taking up more space—somehow—than Sirius’ six foot frame. _Bliss_ , Remus thinks airily as he watches Lily chase Padfoot away from the stove. Then Padfoot leaps onto his lap, a mass of black fur and paws and then it’s Sirius, his magic flaring as he shifts back to himself and throws his arms around Remus’ neck. Remus, as if he could do anything else, wraps his arms around Sirius’ middle and savours the feeling of the other man pressed tight against him.

“Save me Moony!” Sirius squawks, burying his head into Remus’ shoulder.

“Even when you give my best chocolate to Harry?” Remus retorts, smiling, his cheeks flaming red because he can see Lily smiling in the corner of his eye, something beautiful and proud and it makes Remus’ stomach churn to know that happiness _could_ be his after all.

Sirius lifts his head from Remus’ neck and pouts. “Forgive me?”

Remus rolls his eyes, laughing softly. He can hear everyone else around them—Lily is tending to the bacon, James has gone to find Harry, the both of them chattering away like perfect carbon copies of each other, Pete’s soft humming as he peruses the _Prophet_. But he only needs Sirius, just the rise and fall of his chest, the look in his silvery eyes that says _I love you, I love you more than anything_.

“Of course.”


End file.
